The 2017 Kunio Kawagoe Gold Medal will be presented at the 12th IAFSS Symposium in Lund, Sweden to Dr. Craig Beyler. The Kunio Kawagoe Gold Medal is awarded by IAFSS as a prestigious recognition of life-long contributions to and career achievements in fire science and engineering.
Dr. Beyler has contributed to global progress of fire science and engineering in extensive ways. He provided dedicated leadership to the development of the IAFSS as its president for two terms from 2005 through 2011 and as Chairs/Members of Award and Program committees for the 4th -8th IAFSS Symposia. During his IAFSS presidency, he introduced the digital online library, where all the symposium proceedings are freely available to researchers, so that research papers published in the IAFSS proceedings can be globally identified and available to researchers and practitioners.
Dr. Beyler has contributed to promote the development of fire science and engineering by providing the means to publish and access fire research results worldwide. He is the founding editors for the Journal of Fire Protection Engineering and Fire Science Reviews. In addition, he is the associate editor for Fire Technology and an advisory board member of several fire safety science journals including Fire Technology, Journal of Fire Protection Engineering, and Fire Safety Journal.
As a researcher, Dr. Beyler created a paradigm shift in the area of combustion product generation in compartment fires by his hood experiments investigating the generation of combustion products and the introduction of the concept of the global equivalence, which are now widely recognized as basic knowledge on combustion product generation.
Dr. Beyler served as the Technical Director for Jensen Hughes, Inc. (formerly Hughes) for 24 years. As technical director, he was involved in fire protection design, research and development projects for the company. During this period, he contributed to the growth of the number of engineers of the company from less than 50 to over 600 engineers and mentored hundreds of interns, graduate students, and engineers.