Over several decades, steel plays an important role in global economic growth as it is an indispensible part for development of a nation. As a result, continual improvement in steel technology is must for sustainable economic growth of a nation. Towards achieving this aim numerous dedicated steel researcher centres in academic institution or university as well as corporate research and development centres of global steel producing companies have been established and operating with significant impact on world economy. Steel research centres have strong potential for playing a significant role on global development as overall wellbeing of people in the world is reflected by their per capita consumption of steel. World-wide economic scenario continues to be challenging but appears to be bottoming out. Therefore, global economic growth mostly in developing country like India, China and Brazil requires high utilization of steel in coming years. Recent trends of world-wide steel consumptions show that the quality issues regarding steel will be much stringent in future. Detail statistical analysis of economic strata of a country indicates that techno-economic growth of a country is highly dependent on its steel production. India, being the fourth largest producer of steel of the world, still starving hard to improve its quality. Overcapacity in the Chinese steel industry is of great concern as it results in prices reduction not only globally but in India also. Amidst this competitive scenario, steel makers in India also started to face the rising prices of domestic raw iron ore whereas international prices of steel continue to decline. The available technology in Indian steel industry is due for rigorous improvement to sustain global competition. Requirement of cutting edge technology become essential for obtaining quantum jump in steel industry productivity as aimed by government of India as well as for matching with stringent quality criteria. However in India, constant effort towards better mining and import of better grade raw material is continuing but the striking fact is that the civilization is depleting the worldwide rich ore reserves at a very high rate. Utilization of low grade raw material with cheaper technology and green process become an important issue for steel industry globally. India has to find some technological way out to address this challenge. Research and development related to steel industry are essential to improve existing technology or introduce a new technology, Indian steel industry lacks evidently in this aspect. Maximum steel makers of India do not possess a dedicated research and development center for steel industry. Constant effort for new technology and handling of day to day problem is the need of time and some steel research center should address these nationally. Such centre should have multidirectional activity to empower running of all the components of a steel plant. Such an institution can only sustain with constant input from industry and possible output or solutions by its expert. Moreover, such institute can address more problems if it is in geographically favorably located. Odisha is enriched with mines of iron ores and consequently several steel industries are located in this state. Rourkela is one of the significant steel cities in India. In backdrop of such national condition and favorable geographical location, the steel research center at NIT Rourkela become very effective and help full for Indian steel sector. Already Metallurgical and Materials engineering department along with other department of NIT Rourkela has proven research record in the areas related steel. Research focuses of the steel research centre on projects addressing some of the most pressing concerns of steel sector: understanding issues of steel industry and discovering the solutions through academic and industrial collaborative relation. The Centre currently focuses on improvement of different industrial process in steel sector through modeling and simulation, environmental and techno-economic issues related to steel industry. The institute is successfully conducting a post graduate course namely M Tech with specialization in Steel technology. The programme is multidisciplinary and designed to train student of different branch for working in steel sector. The institute is giving M Tech degree in their basic engineering with specialization in steel technology (e.g. M Tech in electrical engineering with specialization in steel technology). To make effective industry-academy interaction one proposal titled “Coupled CFD-thermodynamic-kinetic simulation and physical modeling of basic oxygen steel making process” is being submitted to Steel Development Fund, Ministry of Steel, Govt. of India.

The steel research centre is ready and well equipped to broaden the focus to provide all kinds of technical support to steel industry and pursue fundamental research on steel in more wide fashion as our institutes has a large pool of experts in different discipline, required for successful operation of a good steel research center. This broad vision of the centre includes following micro visions;