Prof Nikki (Nicola) Wagner is the Director of the DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Integrated Mineral and Energy Resource Analysis (CIMERA) and Professor in the Geology Department at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. Her research areas include organic petrology, coal petrography, trace elements and critical raw materials in coal and associated products, coal geology, carbon dioxide capture and storage, coal oxidation, underground coal gasification, coal conversion, ash utilization, and so on. She completed her Phd in 1998 (Wits). Shortly thereafter, Dr Wagner worked for Sasol in their Coal to Syngas Research Group, as a coal petrographer. Prof Wagner joined the School of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in 2006, where she ran the Coal Research group for 8 years before moving back into geology at the University of Johannesburg in 2014. Prof Wagner has over 70 peer reviewed publications and produced a book on coal petrology. She has graduated over 45 postgraduate students, and is an active peer reviewer for over 10 research journals, is accredited by the International Committee for Organic Petrology (ICCP), and is the elected editor of the ICCP News.