2024 Steel Intern Scholarships
Joseph S. Stein-Muise
As an AIST Steel Intern Scholar, I was fortunate to secure a co-op placement at Hatch LTD. in Mississauga, Ont., Canada, where I have been working as a process engineer in the ferrous side of the pyrometallurgy group. This position is my first in industry and thus it has exposed me to many new experiences. It is my first time working with licensed professional engineers, my first foray into the world of iron and steel and my first time doing process work. As such, every day I find myself immersed in a different task where I can learn new skills as well as apply what I have learned in the classroom.
During my time at Hatch, my professional development has grown by leaps and bounds, both in technical and soft skills. This would not have been possible without the incredible people I have had the opportunity to work with and the environment of learning that they have created. From the beginning, I have felt an unexpected amount of trust in me to perform work which has been delivered to clients and will impact the group’s decision-making going forward. At this point, I have worked with a decent portion of the team, and everyone has been happy to go out of their way to answer questions and point me in the right direction without explicitly telling me how to do the task. This has allowed me to develop my independent problem-solving skills and given me confidence in my capabilities, which has been especially important in my work in independently developing models for direct reduced iron processes in METSIM and Excel. Occasionally, detailed operating data is not available, and as such, I am required to use my best judgment to fill in the gaps. At the start of my co-op, I felt that this was beyond my capabilities but is now something I do with confidence on a daily basis.
The consulting portion of Hatch’s work has provided another invaluable learning experience. Having the opportunity to attend client meetings and observe how my coworkers interact with people both inside and outside of the team has given me a standard by which I can model my own behavior. This has led to me drastically improving my soft skills and allowed me to become a more effective communicator and collaborator. The other significant benefit of consulting is the variety of tasks which I have had the opportunity to work on. In my short time at Hatch, I have been helping with modeling direct reduction processes, estimating CAPEX and OPEX, debugging blast furnace troubles, researching deep-sea mining, and developing products for potential patents. I find myself formulating strong opinions and competencies in topics which, as recently as a few months ago, I knew nothing about. This wide variety of tasks has also allowed me to develop an idea of what interests me and what direction my burgeoning career could go.
My time at Hatch has been beyond my expectations both in the time and energy that has gone into my professional development and in the impact which my work has had on real-world issues, such as converting models to simulate hydrogen feedstock instead of natural gas in anticipation of the shift away from fossil fuels. This could not have been possible without the pyrometallurgy team’s mentorship or the opportunity that the AIST has given me, and I look forward to continuing my journey in iron and steel at Hatch for the next four months and beyond.