George Luxbacher
Dr. George W. Luxbacher is the Deputy Associate Director for Mining with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He earned a B.S. degree in mining engineering from the Pennsylvania State University and began his career with Pittsburgh Coal Company, a subsidiary of Consolidation Coal Company. Returning to Penn State, he then completed his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees, also in mining engineering, and is a Centennial Fellow of the Penn State’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. After graduation, he worked for various subsidiaries of Occidental Petroleum Corporation for 35 years, Occidental Research Corporation, Island Creek Coal, and Glenn Springs Holdings, before retiring as senior vice president of operations at Glenn Springs to start his consulting firm, MELM Consulting. In 2016 he returned to his research roots and started consulting for NIOSH, joining NIOSH as a Senior Service Fellow in 2017. He manages the NIOSH mining program’s extramural research contracts, including the capacity build component designed to support graduate research and faculty development in mining engineering. Dr. Luxbacher has a diverse background, having managed a bulk materials terminal on the Mississippi River, worked internationally, and is the co-inventor of a process to dredge and refine phosphorus-bearing sludge into a marketable product, developing, designing, and constructing a phosphorus recovery plant in Tennessee while at Glenn Springs. Dr. Luxbacher is a registered professional engineer and has served on innumerable committees in leadership roles within SME. He serves as a Program Evaluator (PEV) in mining engineering for ABET. He was president of SME in 2008 and president of AIME in 2012, now becoming the first person to serve a second term as AIME President since the early 1900s. He has a deep interest in the history of AIME since its founding in 1871.