Dr. Ty Okosun Received AIST J.E. Johnson Jr. Award

May 20, 2025

2 people holding an award

Congratulations to Dr. Tyamo (Ty) Okosun, CIVS Associate Director for Research, on receiving the J.E. Johnson Jr. Award at AISTech 2025. Established in 1921 and supported by AIME from funds donated by Mrs. Margaret Hilles Johnson in memory of her husband, J.E. Johnson, Jr., a prominent engineer and author in the field of iron blast-furnace construction and practice. This award is conferred upon an individual 40 years of age or younger to encourage creative work in branches of the metallurgy or manufacture of pig iron. He currently leads research in ironmaking and electric arc furnace modeling, among related steelmaking research at the Steel Manufacturing Simulation and Visualization Consortium (SMSVC).

It is a great honor to receive this year’s J.E. Johnson, Jr. award and to be among the company of past recipients who are so influential in the field of ironmaking. I send my thanks to the AIST Ironmaking Technical Committee for this honor, as well as to PNW, CIVS, the SMSVC, and all the ironmakers who have encouraged, guided, and influenced my career thus far. The need for innovation in ironmaking remains strong, and this award serves to encourage the sort of creativity which will carry our industry into the future.

Ty Okosun

Ty received his BS in Mechanical Engineering from PNW in 2009, his MSME (2012) and PhD in ME (2018) from Purdue University with his research and theses conducted at CIVS under the supervision of Prof. Chenn Zhou. He currently leads PNW’s efforts on three DOE-funded projects in ironmaking, PNW CIVS’s Integrated Virtual Blast Furnace (IVBF) for Energy Efficiency Improvement ($7M), research on Scaling Hydrogen-DRI to Decarbonize Ironmaking ($1.1M, supporting Carnegie Mellon University), and research on Microwave-powered H-Plasmas for Direct Reduction of Ore Concentrates in a Rotary Kiln Furnace ($500k, supporting Argonne Nat’l Lab). Active since 2021, the IVBF project has developed a suite of systems currently being deployed at industrial facilities, including validated machine-learning-based Reduced Order Models for blast furnace operational guidance, AI-tools for forecasting hot metal silicon content, real-time indices for quantifying blast furnace stability, and a new non-invasive imaging sensor for instantaneously measuring the blast furnace casting rate.

The Association for Iron & Steel Technology (AIST) is a non-profit organization with 18,500 members from more than 70 countries. With 29 Technology Committees representing all facets of the iron and steel manufacturing process and 22 Local Member Chapters spread across six continents, AIST represents an incomparable network of steel knowledge and expertise.

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