Dr Penny Stewart is a mining engineer and the founder and CEO of PETRA. Penny worked on mine sites for five years before obtaining her Queensland 1st Class Mine Managers’ Certificate of Competency. It was during her time working in the underground and open pit mines of WA that she learnt how geological uncertainty affects our ability to mine to plan. This experience led her to undertake PhD studies at University of Queensland’s JKMRC, where she developed statistical models to predict the mechanical behaviour of rock and was awarded the Ian Morley Prize for this work. In 2015, Penny founded PETRA with the hypothesis that the engineering behaviour of rock throughout a mine is best estimated by feeding back 100s of millions of tonnes of actual mine performance data into engineering models and optimisations. Six years later Petra’s AI powered mining software help mining professionals enhance orebody knowledge and optimise the mine value chain.