Jean-Pierre Birat is a metallurgical engineer, who became involved in environmental issues and in their social dimensions. JP was educated at Ecole des Mines, in Paris and then at the University of California in Berkeley, USA. He worked in steel research in Maizières-lès-Metz, France - IRSID now ArcelorMittal Research. Then he was the Secretary General of ESTEP, the European Steel Technology Platform. He is now a senior consultant at IF Steelman, a consultancy he created in 2013 and which he owns.JP was the director of ULCOS in the years 2000s, a European research program to decarbonize the steel industry and also of the CO2Breakthrough Program at WorldSteel.He is a foreign member of the Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, and he received several awards, including the Bessemer Gold Medal in 2003.He is a senior consultant at IF Steelman, of which he is the founder and CEO.He presently teaches in China at the University of Science and Technology in Beijing, where he is an invited Professor and Researcher, and at SPEIT-Shanghai Jiaotong University in Shanghai. He is the Editor in Chief of Matériaux et Techniques, an international Journal published in France. He is an editor with Materials Science and Technology in Paris and with Carbon Neutrality Frontiers in Beijing.