John Grandfield (chair) 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 five 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 was chair of the TMS Aluminum Committee and editor of Light Metals 2014 and Essential Readings in Light Metals. He is the 2018 recipient of the TMS Light Metals Division Distinguished service award and the Keith Brimacombe prize.

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 he has 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 250 scientific papers, seven 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), Ultrasonic Melt Treatment of Light Alloys Melts (2014) and Solidification Processing of Metallic Alloys Under External Fields (2018). Eskin has been a member of TMS since 2000, where he has co-organized a number of symposia, and is a regular speaker at TMS annual meetings. He is a recipient of two Warren Peterson Cast Shop for Aluminum Production Awards and one Aluminum Technology Award from TMS.

Gerd-Ulrich Grün received his diploma in geophysics in 1982 from Technical University of Clausthal. He joined the research department of the German Aluminium 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 Aluminium. Later on, this extended to areas like filter development and furnace optimization. Presently, he is Head of the Research Department Process Development within the Research & Development of Hydro Aluminium Rolled Products GmbH, located at the Research Center Bonn, Germany. In this role his responsibilities include research and development work regarding topics like recycling, melt treatment, DC casting of rolling ingots, and the further rolling process chain. As a part of this responsibility he was, and still is, also involved in participating in and managing 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, including serving as the TMS Annual Meeting Cast Shop Symposium Chair and Co-Chair. Grün has authored and co-authored numerous international publications, holds 3 patents, and has given lectures on DC casting at engineering schools and technical courses in Germany.

Arild Håkonsen is the head of Engineering & Technology at Hycast AS, and 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 research and development 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. Dr. Peterson and a co-worker received the TMS 1991 Light Metals Best Paper Award for work on dissolved metals in Hall-Heroult cryolitic melts. Ray also received the Recycling Technology Award for his paper in the 2002 Light Metals. He has authored 56 papers and made numerous presentations in many areas related to aluminum: primary aluminum production, recycling, dross processing, and molten metal treatment and handling. Dr. Peterson has also been active in industrial energy management. He has been granted 5 US Patents and in 2018 he was inducted as a Fellow of TMS.

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.