Rate My Professor Zushu Li

Professor Zushu Li is a Professor of Metallurgy at the Advanced Steel Research Centre, Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), University of Warwick. He joined WMG in April 2016 as Principal Research Fellow (Associate Professor level) and EPSRC Manufacturing Fellow. He was promoted to Reader in 2019 and to Professor in 2022. Prior to joining academia, he served as Principal Scientist in Steelmaking at Tata Steel Research & Development in the UK for over nine years, where he gained extensive industrial experience in process innovation and product development in the metals sector. Professor Li holds a PhD in Metallurgy from Chongqing University, China.

His academic interests and research specializations center on process metallurgy, including sustainable steelmaking, electric arc furnace (EAF) processes, slag formation, reaction mechanisms, and valorization, ironmaking, thermophysical properties of metallurgical systems, and decarbonization strategies for the steel industry. He leads research at the Advanced Steel Research Centre focused on enabling low-carbon steel production through fundamental studies and pilot-scale demonstrations. Key publications include 'Basic oxygen steelmaking slag: formation, reaction, and energy and material recovery' (2022, with J. Li et al.), 'Effect of Residual Elements during the Hot-Working Process of Steel' (2024, with I. Kapoor et al.), 'Oxide evolution during solidification of 316L stainless steel additive manufacturing powders with different oxygen contents' (2021, with X. Yang et al.), 'Dynamic model of oxygen steelmaking: multi-zone kinetics validation' (2018, with B.K. Rout et al.), and 'Modelling the Dissolutive Wetting of Slag-Oxide System at Steel Refining Temperature' (2025, with M. Yang et al.). As holder of an EPSRC Manufacturing Fellowship (EP/N011368/1), titled 'Uncovering Fundamental Mechanisms to Enable Sustainable Manufacturing of Steel in the UK', he has advanced knowledge in scrap-based steelmaking and alternative ironmaking routes. His publications have accumulated over 2,900 citations, underscoring his impact on the field.