Dr. Ming Cai Wins Prestigious John A. Franklin Award

Dr. Ming Cai, Geomechanics Research Chair at Laurentian University wins the prestigious John A. Franklin Award for his work in rock mechanics and rock engineering.

This award recognizes an individual or individuals who have recently made an outstanding and published technical contribution in the fields of rock mechanics or rock engineering in Canada and/or internationally.

John A. Franklin Award Eligibility

The eligibility for the award is restricted to either:

• Canadian Geological Society (CGS) members (need not be resident in Canada) or

• other individuals, resident in Canada, who have provided an outstanding service to the Canadian geotechnical community.

As a result of this criteria, the Canadian Geological Society presented this award to Dr. Ming Cai for his work related to rock support in difficult ground conditions, interpretation of acoustic emission and micro seismic monitoring data, and proposed quantitative approaches to estimate peak and residual rock mass strengths. 

Improving safety and efficiency in the mining industry in Canada and around the world is one of the aims of Dr. Cai’s work. For this reason, they recognized Dr. Cai’s accomplishments in the development of ground-support products to prevent a potentially life-threatening effect of deep mining known as rockburst. These products include the MCB33 dynamic rockbolt and another prototype rockbolt which has superb dynamic support capacity.

Already, there are some deep mines in Canada using the first ground-support product, MCB33. Also, for enhanced safety and productivity, the second prototype has the potential for being used in deep underground mines.

John Alan Franklin – Past President, International Society for Rock mechanics

John A. Franklin (1940-2012) was a professor in Waterloo’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and a developer and founding partner of WipWare Inc.

Established in 1993, this award honours the past President of the International Society for Rock Mechanics (ISRM), John Franklin (1940-2012) for his outstanding contributions to the Canadian and international rock mechanics communities, and to the CGS. For more information about Dr. Franklin, please visit https://uwaterloo.ca/wat-on-earth/news/john-alan-franklin-1940-2012