The Governance and Strategic Planning Committee (Governance for short) is co-chaired by the IAFSS Chair and one other trustee. Membership in this committee is limited to members of the association leadership.
Co-Chairs
There are currently two co-chairs for the committee:
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Dr Natalia Flores-Quiroz is a researcher with experience in fire safety engineering. She worked for five years as a fire safety engineer in the mining industry before joining academia. She holds a MSc in fire safety from Ghent University, and her PhD focused on Fire investigations in Informal Settlements. Currently she is a lecturer at Stellenbosch University, where her main research areas are reconstruction of incidents in low-income settlements (i.e., informal settlements, refugee camps) and wildland urban interface (WUI) fires.
Bronwyn Forrest is a 3rd year PhD student at the University of Waterloo, conducting multi-disciplinary research investigating human physiological response to fire exposure. Bronwyn graduated in 2017 with a BSc. Honours Kinesiology and in 2020 with a MASc. Mechanical & Mechatronics Engineering (Heat Release Rate in Ventilation-Limited Furniture Fires) before merging her two degrees in her PhD research. As a senior graduate student in the Fire Research Group, Bronwyn spear-heads large-scale fire experiments, mentors junior graduate and undergraduate students, and has recently set-up a new ‘human exposure lab’ at the Fire Research Facility where she leads new research in that area. Since her induction into the world of fire science, Bronwyn has grown more and more passionate about the multi-faceted nature of emerging fire safety challenges. Through innovative research, she hopes to make meaningful contributions that help shape changes to fire safety over the course of her career.
Bronwyn has been involved in the IAFSS since the virtual symposium in 2021. She was very active as part of the ‘behind-the-scenes’ team that built the online conference platform. She co-organized and co-led the EDI and ECR events and brought ‘gamification’ to the conference. After the virtual symposium, she served as co-chair of the newly formed Early Career Researchers sub-committee, devising new initiatives specifically targeted towards early career researchers/professionals and is excited to continue in that role as member of the IAFSS MAC. Bronwyn is looking forward to the opportunity to share her perspectives and aims to establish valuable initiatives for others early in their fire safety careers.
Dr. (HDR) Eric Guillaume has worked in fire sciences since 1998. He formerly led the fire behaviour department of SNCF (French Railway), then changed company in 2005 to join LNE (The French National Laboratory for Testing and Metrology) as head of Fire safety studies department, and later as head of research for whole testing activities of LNE. Nowadays (since 2015), he works for Efectis France, first as Technical Director and more recently as General Manager of the company, leading one of the most important fire testing and fire safety engineering companies in Europe (With approx. 180 people and 28 M€ turnover)
Eric Guillaume is a fire expert involved in various missions, including laboratory development, teaching, standardization and regulation, fire toxicity and modelling fire behaviour of materials. In the field of fire safety, he is the author of more than 50 scientific publications, 27 book chapters and more than 200 conference acts. He is Technical advisor for fire safety for many French authorities, and active in standardization as chairman of the standardization committee ISO TC92/SC3, dealing with “Fire Threat to People and the Environment” and convenor of ISO TC61/SC4/WG2, dealing with smoke opacity and corrosivity for plastics.
Dr. Albert Simeoni is Professor and the Department Head of Fire Protection Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). He is the WPI site director of the Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center (WIRC), an Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) of the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the United States. Dr. Simeoni has served IAFSS by being chair or co-chair of the Wildland Fire track (2014, 2020 and 2023), Co-chair of the Awards Committee for the Best Thesis Awards (2023), Associate-Editor of Fire Safety Journal (2010-2015), member of the Editorial Board of Fire Safety Journal (since 2016), and Contributing Editor of Fire Safety Science News (since 2011).
Dr. Simeoni conducted his studies in France, obtaining a Bachelor Degree in Physics from the University of Corsica (1994), a Master Degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Master of Science in Physics from the University of Aix-Marseille (1996), as well as a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Corsica (2000). Before joining WPI, he held academic leadership positions in fire research in the UK (Chair of the BRE Center for Fire Safety Engineering at the University of Edinburgh) and in France (Head of the Wildland Fire Research Program at the University of Corsica). He has also experience as a consultant in thermal and fire sciences in the US and has spent over 10 years volunteering as a firefighter in France, eventually becoming Fire Captain and Chief of a small Fire Station.
His research interests cover wildland fire and fire science. He has experience in developing experimental, analytical, and numerical techniques to better understand fire dynamics and to predict fire and wildland fire behavior and impact.
Brian J. Meacham, PhD, PE (CT&MA), EUR ING, CEng (UK), FIFireE, FSFPE, is the Managing Principal of Meacham Associates. He develops risk-informed performance-based solutions to complex building and infrastructure challenges, provides peer-review services, and undertakes building and fire regulatory system studies. He also conducts research in these areas as well as in sustainable and fire resilient built environments and fire safety technologies. Brian has authored more than 300 publications, given more than 300 presentations and has been awarded more than $4M in research funding. His prior positions include Associate Professor of Fire Protection Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Principal at Arup, Technical Director and Research Director at SFPE, and fire safety engineer in Europe and the USA. Brian is Chair of the ICC Performance Code Committee, Chair of the NFPA Technical Committee on Fire Risk Assessment Methods, Immediate Past Chair of the International Association for Fire Safety Science (IAFSS), a Past President of the SFPE, and a past Chair of the Inter-jurisdictional Regulatory Collaboration Committee (IRCC). He is a licensed Professional Engineer in CT and MA, a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the Institution of Fire Engineers (UK), a registered European Engineer (EUR ING), a Fellow of the SFPE, and a Fulbright Global Scholar.
Kazunori Harada is a professor of architecture & architectural engineering at Kyoto University, Japan. He has a career in fire research for over 35 years. He has authored 14 IAFSS symposium papers. His expertise covers the fire resistance of construction materials, smoke movement and control, burning of combustibles in open and compartment, performance-based code & design of buildings and so on. He serves as a vice president of AOAFST, Asia-Oceania Association of Fire Science and Technology. He also serves as the Convenor of ISO/TC92/SC4 WG9, calculation methods for fire safety engineering (FSE), which develops calculation standards concerning FSE.
Homepage: http://www.sbee.archi.kyoto-u.ac.jp/
Dr Xinyan Huang is an Associate Professor at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the Deputy Director of the Research Centre for Fire Safety Engineering. He received his PhD from Imperial College London, MSc from UC San Diego, and BEng from Southeast University, and was a Postdoc at UC Berkeley. Dr Huang is a Combustion Scientist and a Fire Safety Engineer who has co-authored over 200 journal papers. He is an Associate Editor of Fire Technology and International Journal of Wildland Fire, an editorial member of J. Building Engineering, Fire Safety J. and Fire and Materials, a Chartered Building Services and Fire Engineer, a committee member for HK Fire Safety Code, and a Fire Expert for HK High Court. He receives the NSFC Excellent Young Scientists Fund, Bernard Lewis Fellowship and Sugden Best Paper Award from Combustion Institute, “5 under 35” and Bono Award from the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE).
Xinyan has been an editor of the IAFSS website for over 10 yeras and the master of IAFSS social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) since 2015. He has won multiple Best Poster Awards and Best Fire Image Awards at the IAFSS International Symposiums. In 2020, he received the IAFSS Proulx Early Career Award for his significant contributions to the understanding of smoldering wildfires, fire dynamics in microgravity and cable fires.
Beth Weckman is a professor and head of the Fire Research Group and Fire Safety Graduate program in Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Waterloo. She has been a member of the International Association for Fire Safety Science (IAFSS) Executive Committee (since 2017), Vice Chair for the Americas and currently Trustee and Chair of Governance Committee, as well as Local host for the 13th Symposium, Proceedings co-editor for 12th, and Co-Track Chair for 14th Symposia. She is excited to continue through the transition of IAFSS, working to enhance vibrancy and activity through outreach and expanded membership, promoting new educational initiatives, international exchange and translation of fire research information across multiple disciplines, career levels and fire safety stakeholders. As well as serving for IAFSS, she chairs the SFPE Accreditation & Curriculum Committee and serves on the FSRI Research Advisory Board, ASTM E05: Fire Standards Committee and as technical expert for Standards Council Canada on ISO TC92 on Fire Safety Engineering.
At the UW Live Fire Research Facility, Beth leads a wide range of critical fire safety and fire science related research projects with undergraduates, graduate students and partners from university, fire service, industry and government. These include small, medium and full scale experiments aimed toward understanding and improving fire dynamics and fire performance of materials and systems and development of advanced understanding of fire behavior and hot gas movement across a span of fire safety engineering applications. Ongoing exciting research involves developing new test methods and sensors to characterize wildland fire emissions, development of risk parameters and frameworks for timber fire situations and interdisciplinary work with physiologists to study how modern fire environments impact humans. Through her work, Beth seeks to couple the latest fire research with educational initiatives to enrich learning and promote broad, multidisciplinary technology transfer amongst fire safety stakeholders at all levels.
Arnaud Trouvé is Professor and Chair in the Department of Fire Protection Engineering at the University of Maryland in College Park, USA. He joined the Faculty in 2001 with a Ph.D. (1989) and Engineering Degree (1985) from École Centrale of Paris, France, and with previous experience as a combustion research engineer. Professor Trouvé’s research interests include fire modeling and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD); application of data assimilation to fire and combustion; and physical modeling of combustion- and fire-related phenomena, including compartment fires, wildland fires and explosions. Professor Trouvé is a Fellow of the Combustion Institute and the recipient of the 2017 FORUM Sjölin Award. He has served on the editorial boards of the Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, Progress in Energy and Combustion Science, Combustion and Flame, and Fire Technology, and is currently on the editorial boards of Combustion Theory and Modelling and the Fire Safety Journal. Professor Trouvé is also a past Chair of the US Eastern States Section of the Combustion Institute (ESSCI) and a past Member of the Executive Board of the International Association for Fire Safety Science (IAFSS). He is a co-Chair of a recent initiative endorsed by IAFSS and called the “IAFSS Working Group on Measurement and Computation of Fire Phenomena” (the MaCFP Working Group) and the past Chair of a new network of leading higher-education institutions and research laboratories in fire safety engineering called the International Fire Safety Consortium (IFSC).
Website: https://fpe.umd.edu/clark/faculty/601/Arnaud-Trouvé
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arnaud-trouvé-27622b30/
Dr Felix Wiesner is an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia and study the role of engineered timber in fire safety. I work in the Faculty of Forestry as part of the Wood Science department. My research focus has mostly been experimental, considering fire dynamics in timber compartments and the structural fire capacity of engineered timber products. In addition, I am interested in the performance of timber in exterior building or infrastructure setting. This closely interfaces with wildfire considerations for the wildland urban interface (WUI), especially when it comes to smouldering.
On the MAC, as a member representative of the Americas, I want to further the inclusion and opportunities of Early Career Researchers within IAFSS and the wider fire safety research community. I work on the Research committee to channel research ideas to ensure that our organization continues to address fire safety challenges for the 21st century in an effective and sustainable manner.
website: https://forestry.ubc.ca/faculty-profile/felix-wiesner/
Prof. Yuji Nakamura is Full Professor in Department of Mechanical Engineering, Toyohashi University of Technology (TUT), appointed as Affiliate Full Professor in Center for Fire Science and Technology, Tokyo University of Science (since 2014). He currently serves the Head of Energy Conversion Laboratory and appointed as Department Chair since 2024. Prof. Nakamura has made professional service in Fire Science Community served as Management Committee of IAFSS during 2021-2023, worked as Co-chair of LOC in the most recent IAFSS symposium at Tsukuba, acting Associate Editor of Fire Technology since 2014 and board member of Fire Safety Journal since 2017.
Prof. Nakamura received his doctoral degree in Engineering (2000) from Nagoya University (Japan), followed by MSc (1995) and BE (1993) at the same university. Prior to joining TUT, Prof. Nakamura was appointed as Tenured Associate Professor at Hokkaido University, Japan, Assistant Professor and Research Associate at Nagoya University, Japan. During his academic career in Japan, Prof. Nakamura also joined as visiting Research Assistant at The University of Kentucky, Guest Researcher at Building Fire Research Laboratory, The National Institute of Standard and Technology (Gaithersburg Campus), and Visiting Professor at University of California, San Diego. His research interests include combustion, fire dynamics, space engineering, and scale modeling.
ROGAUME Thomas is an Professor at the University of Poitiers – Pprime Institute (UPR3346 CNRS), FRANCE.
My research takes place in the Pprime Institute and concerns the fire safety sciences aspects, notably at the interface between the solid and the gaseous phases, the interfaces solid-gas and there interactions. The expertise developed associates both experimental and numerical aspects in order to characterize the thermal decomposition of solid fuels, the development of pyrolysis models, the gaseous emissions and there kinetic of formation, the ignition and auto-ignition of solid fuels, flame propagation process and the models of combustion. Another aspect concerns the thermomechanical behavior of solid fuels.
https://scholar.google.com.hk/citations?user=tFsOh_IAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
Yu Wang is a professor at the State Key Laboratory of Fire Science, University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). He got joint Ph.D. from USTC and the City University of Hong Kong in 2016 and had working experience at the University of Edinburgh, Worcester Polytechnic Institute and National University of Singapore before returning to China in 2020. His primary research areas are high-rise building fire and large outdoor fire. Yu has published over 50 SCI journal papers, and is currently an Associate Editor in Fire Technology and Editorial Board Member in Fire Safety Journal. He initiated the first English fire course at USTC, Introduction of Fire Dynamics, reported by China News and People’s Daily Online (over 260,000 audiences). In recent years, he has received SFPE Global 5 Under 35 Award, Youth May Fourth Medal (Anhui Province), Young Faculty Career Award (USTCAF), and some Best Paper/Presentation/Poster/Image Awards in IAFSS or AOSFST.
http://en.sklfs.ustc.edu.cn/2020/0916/c17183a449572/page.htm
Brian Lattimer, Ph.D. is a Professor in Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech where he performs experimental and computational research on fire safety and disaster resilience. He has nearly 30 years of experience in fire related research. His research areas include material behavior in fires, fire dynamics, suppression agents, heat transfer from fires to surfaces, structural response during fire, and firefighting technology.
Dr. Shuna Ni is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Fire Protection Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park. She received her Ph.D. degree at Texas A&M University in 2018 and her Master’s degree at Tongji University in 2013. Dr. Ni’s research focuses on fire forensics, structural fire engineering, WUI fire resilience, fire safety of tall mass-timber buildings and fire-related multiple hazards. Her research has been funded by National Science Foundation, National Institute of Justice, Fire Protection Research Foundation, University Transportation Centers under the Department of Transportation, Grand Challenges Grants Program at the University of Maryland and industrial partners.
Dr Wojciech Węgrzyński is with ITB, that is the Polish Building Research Institute in Warsaw. He currently holds the position of the Deputy Head of Fire Research Department and the Professor of the Institute, and a Director at SFPE Europe. He is the Author of 40 peer-reviewed papers published in all of the primary FSE journals. His main area of interest is the fundamentals of compartment fire dynamics and standardized fire testing, and also: use of computational fluid dynamics in fire, wind and fire interaction and evaluation of the effects of the spread of smoke in buildings. His research is focused on the impact of the architectural context of the building on the smoke control performance, as well as finding solutions to make the smoke exhaust systems cheaper and more efficient. Member of the Sub-committee for Research of the IAFSS. 2018 NFPA Harry C. Bigglestone Award Recipient; 2019 Jack Watts Award Recipient; 2020 SFPE 5 Under 35 Award Recipient. Member of Editorial Board of ‘Fire Technology. Hosts a fire podcast at www.firesciencshow.com
Jennifer Wen is currently Professor of Energy Resilience in the School of Mechanical Engineering Sciences, University of Surrey as Professor. Previously, Jennifer held positions at Computational Dynamics Limited (founding vendor of STAR-CCM), British Gas plc, South Bank University, Kingston University London, and University of Warwick. She is a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and Vice-Chair for Research for the International Association for Fire Safety Science. Jennifer is also a member and sub-task leader of the European Safety Panel on Hydrogen Safety (EHSP) established by the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (now Clean Hydrogen Partnership) of the European Commission. She is an Associate Editor for the Proceedings of the Combustion Institute.
Jennifer established and currently leads the Fire and Explosion Modelling Group (FMEG) at Surrey. Her research is focused on numerical studies of safety related reactive and non- reactive flows. She specializes in the development of physics-based sub-models and modelling approaches to capture the underlying physics of complex safety problems. Most of the development has been conducted within the frame of open-source computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code OpenFOAM®. In the hydrogen safety area, her team has developed a comprehensive range of solvers for consequences analysis of both gaseous and liquid hydrogen covering jets and/or catastrophic releases, ignition, jet fire, explosions including vapour cloud explosions as well as deflagration to detonation transition. In the meantime, her team has continued to develop physics based sub-models for simulating various fire scenarios, more lately these including fire whirls, flame spread over liquid fuels, coupled simulations of fire dynamics and liquid fuel evaporation as well as battery fires.
Enrico Ronchi is an Associate Professor at Lund University, Sweden. His research and education activities are focused on evacuation and human behaviour in case of building fires and wildfires. His work has been published in over 150 publications (including >90 peer-reviewed journal papers). He is currently Associate Editor for the journals Fire Technology and Safety Science and member of the editorial board of the Fire Safety Journal.