Course Instructor

Dr. Dirk Vanderschueren

Dr. Dirk Vanderschueren has more than 25 years of experience in the steel industry, including research, product development, and managing process development and quality. Vanderschueren received his M.Sc. in metallurgical engineering at KU Leuven, Belgium, in 1986, followed by a Ph.D. in 1991 and postdoctoral research at the National Research Institute of Metals in Japan and the Nippon Steel Research Centre. Vanderschueren worked as the coordinator of the product development group of OCAS NV, the research center of the SIDMAR group. He then moved to the hot strip mill of SIDMAR N.V. (now ArcelorMittal Gent) as quality manager and manager of process development. Vanderschueren returned to the academic world as a visiting professor at the University of Gent, Belgium, with the OCAS Industrial Chair. He now provides services to the steel industry through Steelmasters, and the welding industry with Fusionpoint.

Course Developer

Professor Dr. Ir. B.C. De Cooman

Professor De Cooman earned his Ph.D. from Cornell University. After 10 years in industrial materials research and research management, Dr. De Cooman started his academic career in ferrous metallurgy research as tenured professor and director of the Laboratory for Iron and Steelmaking at Ghent University in Belgium. In 2005, he became tenured professor and laboratory director at the Graduate Institute of Ferrous Technology of Pohang University of Technology and Science in Korea. Since 2017, he is Vice-President for Research, Development and Innovation of the NLMK Group, a mining and materials company. He has been involved with the development of advanced automotive, electrical, engineering and constructional steels. His research interests include the solid-state physics of ferrous alloys, materials micro-analysis and ferrous products development. His expertise combines an in-depth understanding of material processing (casting, hot rolling, cold rolling, and continuous annealing and galvanizing) with an analysis of materials performance to develop new steel concepts for industrial applications. He contributed to the creation of three steel research centers: OCAS (Belgium), The Graduate Institute for Ferrous Technology (South Korea), and The NLMK RD&I Center (RUSSIA and Belgium). He also holds a professorship at the Lipetsk Technical University, Lipetsk, Russia.