The 2017 Howard Emmons Invited Plenary Lectureship at the 12th IAFSS Symposium in Lund, Sweden will be delivered by Professor Carlos Fernández-Pello of the University of California at Berkeley (USA). The Emmons Lectureship is a prestigious recognition of distinguished career achievement in fire science and engineering awarded by the IAFSS once every three years at its International Symposia on Fire Safety Science.
Professor Fernández-Pello’s research interests have been broad and recognized for their innovation and significance. His research interests include heat and mass transfer, materials flammability, microgravity fire effects, micro and meso-scale combustion, ignition and flame propagation, smoldering and transition to flaming combustion. He has published more than 200 refereed archival publications, co-authored a book on combustion processes and has been involved in teaching and research activities since the 1970s in institutions around the globe, mainly in the USA, Spain, France and Japan. His current research involves fuel bed ignition by embers and heated/burning particles, materials flammability and test method development for spacecraft applications, smoldering and transition to flaming, modeling of flame spread on practical solid combustibles. It is worth noting that Professor Fernández-Pello worked closely with Howard Emmons when he was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard in the 1970s. Among his many awards, Professor Fernández -Pello was awarded the Philip Thomas Medal of Excellence for the best paper at the 6th International Symposium of Fire Safety Science.