The Beijing Institute of Iron and Steel Engineering, now known as University of Science and Technology Beijing (USTB), was established in April 1952 by merging the departments of mineral and metallurgy from six top Chinese universities, including Tsinghua University and Tianjin University—the original Peiyang University, which was established in 1895. USTB was the first institution of higher education in iron and steel established after the founding of the People’s Republic of China. USTB has now developed into a national key university giving priority to engineering, with balanced development of engineering, science, management, literature, economy, and law.
Today, USTB consists of 14 schools, 48 undergraduate disciplines, 73 doctoral graduate programs, and 128 masters graduate programs. Currently, it is enrolled with over 24,000 full‐time students including 1000 international students and nearly 3,500 faculty and staff. With 66‐year development, USTB has gradually formed a tradition of “rigorous style of study, advocating practice”. It has made important contributions to the development of China’s metallurgy and material industries, and is now striving for the goal of “a distinctive, domestic, first‐class, internationally famous, high-level research university”, and to become the world’s center for education and research of mine, metallurgy, and materials as a long‐term goal with the culture to “be practical, be innovative”.
The current metallurgical engineering discipline at USTB consists of the School of Metallurgical and Ecological Engineering (SMEE), the State Key Laboratory of Advanced Metallurgy, the Institute of Engineering Technology, and the Collaborative Innovation Center of Steel Technology. Undergraduate program metallurgical engineering is implemented only in the SMEE, which consists of the Department of Ecological Science and Engineering, the Department of Physico‐Chemistry, the Department of Ferrous Metallurgy, and the Department of Non‐ferrous Metallurgy.
The special issue of steel research international, guest-edited by Professor Lifeng Zhang, compiles a selection of 17 articles from professors of USTB, including the sub‐fields of ironmaking, steel refining, continuous casting and rolling of steel, physical metallurgy emphasizing on steel properties, process optimization and intelligent manufacturing, energy control and environmental protection during steel production, and external field metallurgy and special metallurgy. These papers can give a clear view on the current research field and research level in the field of steel metallurgical engineering at USTB.