Ashok Kumar, DBA

Dr Ashok Kumar is a steel industry veteran – having spent time in areas of operations and technology management in India and Europe over four decades. A metallurgical engineer with particular passion for iron and steelmaking processes, he is also closely involved with global forums like the worldsteel Association (a body representing most of global steelmaking companies); and academia. Currently, he divides his time between Tata Steel and Swansea University in the UK – focusing on industry transition issues as well as facilitating current improvement priorities.

He produced a doctoral thesis titled ‘Broadening the Pathways for Transition of Ore based Steel Production towards Lower Carbon Footprint’, highlighting need for multiplicity of approaches for various regions of the world. This was awarded a DBA under the programme at SUMAS guided by Dr Ivana Modena in 2023.

Earlier in his career, Ashok has been associated with several phases of improvement in raw materials and ironmaking technologies – including national projects in India as well as global initiatives. He also orchestrated the ‘value in use’ thinking for evaluating raw material resources as well as for operating strategies in iron and steelmaking.

“The Blast Furnace: A Vital Tool in Climate Neutral Ore-Based Steelmaking” has been published online in Transactions of the Indian Institute of Metals. As part of the Springer Nature Content Sharing Initiative, you can publicly share full-text access to a view-only version of your paper by using the following Readers of your article via the shared link will also be able to use Enhanced PDF features such as annotation tools, one-click supplements, citation file exports and article metrics.