31st International Student Seminar in Trondheim

An international student seminar in metallurgy was organized for the 31st time at the NTNU in Trondheim, Norway on the 20th and 21st of November 2025. The seminar is a joint event of metallurgy students from NTNU, KTH in Stockholm and the University of Oulu. This time there were four students of metallurgy from Oulu who participated the event together with two teachers, Anne Hietava and Eetu-Pekka Heikkinen. The topics of the students were Characterisation of refractories in experimental refractory tests (Pekka Oinas-Panuma), Dependence of the Properties of Silicate Slags on the Structure of the Slag (Lauri Kemppainen), IDS modelling in steel solidification (Jaakko Myllymäki) and Melting of Individual Hydrogen Direct Reduced Iron Pellets in a Laboratory-scale Electric Arc Furnace (Matias Harju).

In addition to the seminar, the participants from Oulu had a chance to visit the Elkem silicon plant in Thamshavn near Trondheim on the day before the seminar. This visit offered a great opportunity to learn about silicon production for which there is no such possibility in Finland.

This was now the fourth time the students of metallurgy from Oulu participated the event, that was originally created by professors Lauri Holappa from Helsinki University of Technology (nowadays Aalto University) and Seshadri Seetharaman from the KTH. Last year the event was held in Oulu and in 2026 the students of metallurgy will gather in Stockholm for the 32nd meeting.