The course instructors are leading experts in their fields who will provide attendees with strategies and techniques that have been shown to work, based on their extensive experience.

John Grandfield is director of Grandfield Technology Pty Ltd., (a consulting and technology firm) and adjunct professor at Swinburne University of Technology in the High Temperature Processing Group. He has a bachelor’s of applied science in Metallurgy (RMIT University), a M.Sc. in mathematical modelling (Monash University), and a Ph.D. in materials science (University of Queensland). Grandfield has 30 years’ experience in light metals research and technology in continuous casting and metal refining and is regularly invited to give training courses, participate in in-house innovation workshops, and conduct R&D program reviews around the world. Grandfield also conducts metals industry analysis on the tungsten and magnesium industries with analysts CM Group. He has four patents, has published two book chapters, more than 50 conference and journal papers and has co-authored a book on DC casting of light metals. He is chair of the TMS Aluminum Committee and editor of Light Metals 2014.

Dmitry Eskin received his engineering and Ph.D. degrees from Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys (Technical University, Russia). After that he worked as a senior scientist in the Baikov Institute of Metallurgy (Russian Academy of Sciences) with a main research focus of alloy development, heat treatment, and metal processing of aluminum alloys. From 1999 to 2011, he was a Fellow at the Materials Innovation Institute (The Netherlands) and since 2008 also held a position of associate professor at Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands), where he conducted fundamental and applied research on solidification processing of metallic materials. In 2011 he joined Brunel University (U.K.) as a professor. His current research concerns solidification processing of light alloys. He is a well-known specialist in physical metallurgy and solidification processing of light alloys, author and co-author of more than 180 scientific papers, six monographs, and a number of patents. Among his books are Multicomponent Phase Diagrams: Applications for Commercial Aluminum Alloys (2005), Physical Metallurgy of Direct-Chill Casting of Aluminum Alloys (2008), Direct-Chill Casting of Light Alloys: Science and Technology (2013), and Ultrasonic Melt Treatment of Light Alloys Melts (2014). Eskin has been a member of TMS since 2000 and is a regular speaker at TMS annual meetings.

Gerd-Ulrich Grün received his diploma in geophysics in 1982 from Technical University of Clausthal. He joined the research department of the German aluminum company VAW in 1990, where his work concentrated on the development and application of mathematical modeling tools on the DC casting and shape casting of aluminum, later on this extended to areas like filter development and furnace optimization. Presently, he is head of the Research Department Rolling Ingots within the R&D of Hydro Aluminium Rolled Products GmbH, located at the Research Center Bonn, Germany and is responsible for all research and development work regarding topics like recycling, melt treatment, and DC casting of rolling ingots. As a part of this responsibility he is also involved in participating in and managing of several international research projects in the field of modeling of casting and solidification. He is also active in organizing and reviewing activities with regard to international conferences, such as acting as both chair and co-chair for the Cast Shop Symposium at the TMS annual meeting. Grün has authored and co-authored a number of international publications, and has given lectures on DC casting at engineering schools and technical courses in Germany.

Arild Håkonsen head of Engineering & Technology at Hycast AS, earned his first master’s degree in physical metallurgy at the Norwegian Institute of Technology (NTH). He holds a second master’s degree in technology management from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH), and the University of California, Berkeley. Håkonsen has been with Hycast, a subsidiary of Hydro Aluminium AS that develops, produces, and markets casthouse technology, since 2002. He has worked as R&D manager, head of Technology Management, and has been a member of its board of directors. Prior to this, Håkonsen worked as a senior metallurgist for Hydro Aluminium. His areas of expertise include melt refining of liquid aluminum, DC casting, solidification, and innovation. He has also worked as a research scientist and as a project leader of a European Union research project on mathematical modelling of DC casting (EMPACT), as well as several projects supported by The Research Council of Norway (NFR). Håkonsen has 20 international publications and three patents within aluminum technology.

Ray Peterson is Technology Director for Real Alloy, formerly a division of Aleris International. He has also worked for IMCO Recycling and Reynolds Metals Company during his career. Peterson received his Ph.D. in Metallurgy from the University of Utah in 1984. He has served in many areas of TMS, including as chair of the Aluminum Committee, Light Metals Division Chair, and President in 2009. His professional research interests include molten salt reactions, high temperature thermochemistry, reaction kinetics, heat and energy transport, and molten metal processing.

Peter Schumacher obtained his Diplom Ingenieur in mechanical engineering at the University of Braunschweig (Germany) and a Ph.D. at the Department of Metallurgy and Materials Science at the University of Cambridge (UK). Since 2002 Schumacher has been the managing director of the Austrian Foundry Research Institute (ÖGI) and holds the Chair of Casting Research position at the Montanuniversität Leoben, Austria. He has 25 years of experience in light metals research and technology in continuous and shape casting (Alcan, LSM, ÖGI) with a particular focus on grain refinement. He has been actively involved in issues of the shape casting plants of major European automotive OEMs and their suppliers. His current scientific focus is on the control of trace elements regarding the modification of eutectic structures and the phase selection of intermetallics in light alloys. Schumacher’s work on grain refinement of aluminum and magnesium has been awarded internationally and he is regularly invited to give invited talks at international conference on casting technology issues. Schumacher has three patents, published two book chapters, and more than 80 conference and journal papers.

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