Kyle Toth, Research Engineer, wins 2024  Don B. Daily Safety Grant of AIST worth $20,000

Stanley Ihedigbo

Association for Iron & Steel Technology (AIST) Foundation and the Steel Manufacturers Association (SMA), have announced  Kyle Toth, Research Engineer, Center for Innovation Through Visualization and Simulation, Purdue University Northwest, as the 2024 recipient of the US$20,000 Don B. Daily Safety Grant to Promote Steel Industry Safety and Health.

Toth’s proposal is titled “AI-AAI: Artificial Intelligence-Assisted Accident Investigation.”

Toth’s industry mentor on the project will be Nathan Berry, Cleveland-Cliffs Inc.

Toth will lead a team of researchers and students from Purdue University Northwest’s Center for Innovation Through Visualization and Simulation in collaboration with Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. to develop a specialized safety chatbot to assist with steel industry accident investigations and identifying root causes.

The project team will investigate the development of a custom-trained Large Language Model (LLM) using historical accident data.

The LLM research will also focus on fine-tuning the model to understand and reference common verbiage, acronyms, abbreviations, and jargon specific to ironmaking and steelmaking, as well as incident report formatting, safety standards and best practices.

The resulting tool will provide architected questions and walk end users through the investigation process in the field. The tool will be tested and iterated with feedback from industry.

The chatbot is planned to integrate with Microsoft Teams and will made available for limited groups to test and collect data from.

Upon completion, the project is expected to contribute to long-term safety throughout the industry and serve as a model for using customized LLMs for everyday ironmaking and steelmaking tasks.

“This project represents a very exciting proposition for the academic space right now. With the advent of models like ChatGPT, and large tech companies like Google and Amazon creating and implementing their own models for various use cases, models like these are going to be explored for the foreseeable future.

This represents a very good opportunity to test the waters in the industry with a new emerging technology that is in very high demand, and bring in students from the engineering and computer science fields to collaborate with industry professionals.

I’m hoping this opportunity given by AIST and SMA will encourage the research of development of similar projects and ideas in the future as well,” Toth said.

The Don B. Daily Memorial Fund was created to commemorate the life and industry service of the late Don B. Daily, a compassionate man who truly cared about the safety of all employees working in the steel industry.

His career as president of Gallatin Steel and chairman of the SMA left an enduring mark on the steel industry of North America and has inspired the establishment of numerous safety and health initiatives that have significantly improved the workplace.

The AIST Foundation is a Pennsylvania-based 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation organized for charitable, education and scientific purposes to attract technology-oriented professionals to the steel industry by educating the public about the high-tech, diverse and rewarding nature of careers in steel manufacturing.

Through a variety of programs, the AIST Foundation awards more than US$1,000,000 annually in programs and grants to students, instructors and schools to ensure the iron and steel industry of tomorrow will have a sufficient number of qualified professionals.

The AIST Foundation is part of AIST, an international technical association of more than 17,500 professional and student members from 70 countries. For more information about the AIST Foundation, visit AISTFoundation.org.

The Steel Manufacturers Association (SMA) is the largest steel industry trade association in the United States and is the primary trade association representing North American EAF steel producers.

EAF steelmakers account for over 70% of domestic steelmaking capacity using an innovative, 21st-century production process that is less energy-intensive and has lower carbon emissions than traditional steelmaking.