Introduction to mining industry; topics include, exploration, extraction (including common mining methods) and reclamation; introduction to expectation of environmental standards and safety.

Introduction to mine design platform; design of mine structures, blast holes, sublevel slopes and roads; use of graphical objects such as polylines, surfaces and solids to meet specifications

Introduction to basic statistics, hypothesis testing, correlation, covariance, linear regression and grade estimation methods; statistical topics are discussed for equipment failure rates and truck-shovel cycle times; grade estimation concepts, inverse distance squared method of estimation and variograms for grade estimation.

Introduction to fundamentals of electric circuits including concepts such as inductance, capacitance, and power factor; topics include electrical components encountered in mines such as cables, motors, transformers, power centers, power schemes, mine power, and managing high loads.

Introduction to various infrastructure systems essential to operating a mine; topics include conveyors, hoists, pumps, compressed air systems and communication systems to enable design of appropriate systems to meet design criteria.

Fundamentals of rock mechanics (properties of rock, rock classification systems) with applications in mining including stress distribution in pillars and openings, subsidence, roof support systems and slope stability, laboratory sessions cover standard rock tests with an interpretation of data.

Surveying concepts related to underground mining such as standards, transferring coordinates and establishing control networks, and measuring depth of shaft, new technologies for underground mine surveying.

Introduction to surface mining methods for bedded and non-bedded deposits, topics include key surface mining terminology, roads, dumps, basic blast design to achieve fragmentation and ground vibration goals, pit optimization, equipment, water structures and grade control/sampling issues using mine design software.

Introduction to underground mining methods for bedded and non-bedded deposits; topics include portals, room & pillar mining, longwall mining, open stopping, cut and fill and caving methods, grade control/sampling issues, and drilling and blasting using mine design software.

A student of junior standing spends a period of eight summer weeks working in the industry to gain exposure to and appreciation of the petroleum engineering profession. On-the-job training can be acquired in any field of petroleum engineering. On completion of the training, the student is required to write a brief report on his work.

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Practices promoting benign mining in Saudi Arabia, sustainability related laws governing opening of new mines, operational practices to minimize environmental impact (such as reduced water consumption, dust generation and acid generation) and mitigate impacts (such as reclamation methods).

Causes of accidents, controls, hazard identification and risk assessment, root cause analysis, occupational health and hygiene, responsibilities of management, and regulations, augmented reality is used in laboratory sessions to generate a variety of mining environments and analyze them for health & safety.

Principles of project management for planning and executing the capstone design project over two semesters. Multidisciplinary teams to develop group projects, team management plans are discussed, group projects are developed to validate industry data, and incorporate several key elements of the curriculum.

Use of iterative process to complete projects using realistic constraints imposed on proposed designs, use of professional standards (particularly safety and ethics) to designs, leading to pre-feasibility type report, addressing economic analysis and project management techniques to achieve goals.

Introduction to different resource estimation approaches, traditional geostatistics methods (kriging methods), and the newer machine learning based methods (random forests and neural networks); sample search criteria, international resource estimation standards applied to simple and complex deposits.

Introduction to elements of discrete event simulation (DES) and a simulation software to model mine as a system, DES models for underground and surface mining scenarios considering human and machine performance and mine layouts.

Introduction to database technologies in use in modern mines such as dispatch systems, maintenance systems and plant information systems. Topics covered include methods to extract data, issues relating data from one system to another and data quality challenges using real life data sets and programming.

Introduction to drilling equipment and methods, blasting theory, types of explosives, initiation systems, blast design factors, fragmentation, impacts, hole deviation and strata challenges, blast patterns for open pit mining, cast blasting, cut and fill mining, long hole stopping, and caving methods using blast design software.