Aitber Bizhanov. Was born on October 6 1956 in Buinaksk, Russia. Graduated from the Moscow Physical-Technical Institute in 1979. Aitber spent eleven years as a senior researcher with the Institute for High Temperatures, USSR Academy of Sciences, focusing on solar heat storage technologies. In 1992, he left academia, joining EVRAZ, a large, vertically integrated steel and vanadium enterprise with global assets. Following two years as Commercial Director and Executive Plant Director with ChTPZ-Complex Piping Systems, Aitber joined Kosaya Gora Iron Works in 2005 as Commercial Director, introducing a briquetting technology that used metallurgical wastes. Since then, he's worked on agglomeration and briquetting of the metallurgical wastes as Wastes Management Expert for HARSCO Metals. Today, Aitber is an Independent Representative of the J.C.Steele&Sons, Inc. Company in Russia&CIS, Eastern Europe and Turkey. Has Ph.D. degree in the agglomeration of natural and anthropogenic materials in metallurgy. Author of more than 60 publications and is owner and co-author of 14 Russian Patents in the field. Author and owner of the “BREX” trademark. With his personal participation, projects of briquetting of natural and anthropogenic raw materials of ferrous metallurgy were successfully implemented in a number of countries. Aitber is a member of Institute for Briquetting and Agglomeration (IBA) since 2011.
Valentina Chizhikova. Was born and lives in Moscow. Graduated with honors from the Moscow State Institute of Steel and Alloys (MISiS) with an engineer-metallurgist qualification. Her Ph.D. thesis marked the beginning of the study of solid-phase sintering processes in relation to pellet firing, her doctoral (Dr.Sci.) thesis was devoted to a wide range of tasks related to sinter and pellet production, namely, improving the quality of agglomerated raw materials, resource saving and environmental safety. She has more than 30 years of teaching experience at MISiS (nowthe National University of Science and Technology), as a professor. In scientific terms, the activities of V.M. Chizhikova have always been devoted to solving industry-specific tasks. Under her leadership and direct participation, more than 30 major research projects were successfully implemented. She is the author of about 200 publications, including 80 copyright certificates and patents, the author and co-author of 8 books on the theory of metallurgical processes, techniques and technologies for the production of agglomerated raw materials and pig iron smelting, environmental problems of metallurgy. In practical terms, she served for 13 years (until April 2018) at a large metallurgical enterprise (PJSC Novolipetsk Metallurgical Plant) as a chief ecologist.