Xi holds both bachelor and master’s degrees in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Toronto, and she worked in the Sustainable Materials Processing and Research Lab under the supervision of Professor Mansoor Barati for master’s thesis. Her thesis project was improving the reducibility of manganese ore pellets via direct reduction by methane. Through this project, she developed strong interest in metallurgy and realized the importance to make metallurgical processes more efficient and sustainable. After master’s degree, Xi joined Can-Technologies Inc. and worked as a consultant on a coke reduction project for a blast furnace in Jiangyin Xingcheng Special Steel Works Co., Ltd, China. Their team tried to reduce coke consumption by modeling the burden distribution of raw materials in the furnace. She returned to the academia after the industrial experience to pursue a PhD degree under the supervision of Professor Barati. Her current project is to build a comprehensive understanding of thermodynamic behavior of the sodium-containing lead slag system, pertaining to lead recycling.

Hamed Abdeyazdan is a postdoctoral Research Fellow with Pyrometallurgy Innovation Centre at The University of Queensland, Australia. Hamed's research interest is thermodynamics and kinetics of high-temperature materials processing for optimization of process metallurgy. Hamed finished his Master of extractive metallurgy in 2007 in Iran. He began his PhD in 2012 at University of Wollongong, Australia, after working for 7 years in steelmaking industry. He completed his PhD in 2016 and worked for 2 years as a Research Associate at University of Wollongong. Hamed has been working in PYROSEARCH since 2019, focusing on phase equilibria in copper- and lead-containing metallurgical systems.

Amy Van den Bulck, Ph.D., is a metallurgist whose heart lies at the intersection of science, sustainability, and industrial transformation. In 2020, Amy assumed the role of research project manager for Umicore’s Hoboken lead blast furnace and lead refinery. In 2023, she shifted her focus to decarbonization, exploring hydrogen applications within Umicore’s operations. Her current role as a scientist involves adapting Umicore’s labs to work with hydrogen and exploring the feasibility of using hydrogen as a carbon replacement. Aside from her decarbonization efforts, she also conducts research into the properties of metallurgical phases, with the hope of enhancing the performance optimization of metallurgical processing.

Christian Gomes Rodrigues holds a PhD in aeronautical engineering from the University of Beira Interior, Portugal. Currently, he is a Post-Doc at the Montanuniversity of Leoben, Austria, where he has been working on the modeling of metallurgical processes for the past 8 years. He has several publications on topics ranging from macrosegregation in metal alloys to viscoplastic deformation in semi-solids, to capillary-driven fragmentation during metal alloy solidification. His most recent topic of research is slag solidification and freeze-lining formation.

Dali Hariswijaya is a metallurgist who specialized in extractive metallurgy processes. He obtained his bachelor degree from Bandung Institute of Technology, Indonesia and master degree from Pohang Institute of Science and Technology, Republic of Korea. He worked as a process engineer and research engineer in Krakatau Steel, Indonesia for 11 years between 2011-2022. His field of interests are mainly about metal extraction, hydrogen reduction, circular economy and thermodynamic properties.