Emeritus and Visiting Professor Kim Hein is a graduate of the University of Adelaide (Australia) with a Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Economic Geology, and was the 1989 recipient of the Ralph Tate Medal for Geology, the 1989 Homestake Prize for Economic Geology. She gained her PhD from the University of Tasmania (Australia) in 1995 and undertook research at the Universiteit Utrecht from 2000 to 2004. 

In 2004 she accepted the Chamber of Mines Chair and Professorship of Mining Geology at the University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg and was appointed Professional Professor at Wits in 2012. She is the receipt of the University of Witwatersrand 2014 Vice-Chancellor’s Transformation Individual Award. She taught subjects in the Mining Geosciences, Resource modelling, Exploration and Targetting, Remote Sensing, Applied Field Sciences, 

Kim has been actively involved in geoscience research and education in South Africa and francophone West Africa. She has many years of experience in the fields of metals exploration and mining, research and development, management, orebody modelling, and geoscience education. She was the seasonal lecturer for on-line course to the University of the Witwatersrand in 2020 in Orebody Modelling. She is currenlty the Director and Owner of KAAH Geoservices, which is a specialist consulting company in structural geology as related to mineral resource targeting and delineation, exploration program development, end-of-mine resource evaluaton, capacity building and training.

She has specialised on the applied structural geology, exploration and mining of Archaean and Proterozoic mineral deposits in Australia and Africa. She served on the Senior Executive Team and as a lead researcher in the prestigious AMIRA WAXI P934 project (West Africa Exploration Initiative) from 2006-2018. She was actively involved as the structural geology consultant for the Projet d’Appui au Développement du Secteur Minier (PADSEM) for the Ministère des Mines, des Carrières et de l’Énergie (MMCE) du Burkina Faso in 2016-2018.  

Prof Hein has also held field, project, research and senior geology positions with mining companies in Australia and West Africa. Her education portfolio includes education management, development of mentoring programs for the Edward De Bono Institute in Australia, and student empowerment training, and educational psychology.