McMaster University Professor wins  AIST Foundation digital technologies for steel manufacturing grant award 

Stanley Ihedigbo

Association for Iron & Steel Technology (AIST) Foundation announced Hatem Zurob of McMaster University as the winner of the 2024–2025 Digital Transformation Technologies Grant.

This award, established in 2019, challenges teams from engineering, scientific and mathematical departments at North American universities to submit proposals for grant funding in the theme area of digital technologies within the steel manufacturing industry, including machine learning, computational science, simulation, augmented reality, additive manufacturing, and autonomous robotics, among other related technologies.

The purpose of the US$30,000 award is to support professors in promoting the steel industry to students interested in digital technology, provide direct interaction between students interested in digital technology and the steel industry, and recruit more students interested in digital technology for employment in the steel industry.

Zurob is a professor and chair of the Materials Science and Engineering Department at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ont., Canada.

His industry mentor is Erasmus Amoateng, Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. Zurob’s proposal is titled “Full Process Simulation of Steel Hot Strip Rolling for Commercial-Scale Operations.”

The goal of the project is to calibrate and validate the microstructure models used in a hot strip mill modeling package. This will allow the software to achieve the accuracy required for adoption in the steel industry.

“Making our hot strip mill modeling package, Calypso, available to industry has always been our dream. We are thrilled that AIST is providing the funding to bring this project through its final paces and make this a reality,” Zurob said.

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.

AIST is a non-profit technical association of 17,500 members from 70 countries, with the mission to advance the technical development, production, processing and application of iron and steel. The organization is recognized as a global leader in networking, education and sustainability programs for advancing iron and steel technology.