Member of the SFI Scientific Committee, Professor Jean-Pierre Birat, has published a book with a holistic vision of the connection between materials science, the environment and society. The title of the book is Sustainable Materials Science - Environmental Metallurgy. 

In his book Birat stresses that it is no longer possible to think of materials from the restricted standpoint of Materials and Engineering Sciences.

The book examines how materials relate to society with complex metrics, but also how they generate eco-social services, and have agency along with the people who use them and invent them (Actor Network Theory). Materials are at the core of our societies and of our economies. They are part of pressing environmental challenges, but they also provide powerful answers. 

There are many excellent treatises on materials science and more on industrial ecology. However, the con-nection with the social dimension of sustainability is still rarely discussed and the pluridisciplinary cocktail of approaches used here is truly new.  

In its pluridisciplinary approach the book is meant for students, researchers, engineers, and concerned citizens interested in how materials, nature and people interact. 

Jean-Pierre Birat is a metallurgist, who discovered environmental issues as a researcher with a major steel producer. He is a graduate of the Paris School of Mines and UC Berkeley. He has worked in France (IRSID, ArcelorMittal Research), Japan and Belgium (ESTEP), headed the ULCOS program and has been organizing the “Materials and Society” conferences for 14 years. He teaches the content of this book at the University of Science and Technology of Beijing.