News

ME Assistant Professor Michael Gollner to Receive 2020 Hiroshi Tsuji Early Career Researcher Award

ME Assistant Professor Michael Gollner has been selected as a co-recipient of the 2020 Hiroshi Tsuji Early Career Researcher Award. The annual award, co-sponsored by Elsevier and The Combustion Institute, recognizes up to two early career researchers who have demonstrated excellence in fundamental or applied combustion science and have achieved a significant advancement in their field within four to ten years of completing a doctoral degree or equivalent. The award is named after Professor Hiroshi Tsuji, whose stable porous cylinder counterflow burner configuration has influenced fundamental studies and applications in laminar and turbulent combustion.

About The Combustion Institute Founded in 1954, The Combustion Institute is an international non-profit, educational and scientific society. The Institute promotes and disseminates research activities in all areas of combustion science and technology for the advancement of many diverse communities around the world. The International Symposium on Combustion is the major biennial membership meeting. The Institute also sponsors two scientific journals, Combustion and Flame, published monthly, and The Proceedings of The Combustion Institute, published biennially. Visit The Combustion Institute website at: CombustionInstitute.org.

About Elsevier Elsevier is a world-leading provider of information solutions that enhance the performance of science, health, and technology professionals, empowering them to make better decisions, deliver better care, and sometimes make ground-breaking discoveries that advance the boundaries of knowledge and human progress. Elsevier provides web-based, digital solutions — among them ScienceDirect, Scopus, Elsevier Research Intelligence, and ClinicalKey — and publishes over 2,500 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and more than 33,000 book titles, including a number of iconic reference works. Elsevier is part of RELX Group plc, a world-leading provider of information solutions for professional customers across industries.

Congratulations, Professor Gollner!

ME Assistant Professor Michael Gollner to Receive 2020 Hiroshi Tsuji Early Career Researcher Award

We welcome the new members of the Fire Lab!

New year and new beginnings! We started 2020 welcoming the new members that are joining our Hesse Hall crew.
Prof. Michael Gollner and some of his current students, Priya, Xingyu, Hanyu, and Sriram are joining us as part of a new/sister fire lab!

Prof. Gollner and his students are bringing to berkeley some very interesting projects that focus on different areas of fire science, using experiments and combustion and fluid dynamics theory to solve problems related to fire spread in the wildland and built environments, material flammability, sustainable/green building fire safety and smoke and toxic product transport.

We are very excited to this new semester and new projects!

Recent News: International Combustion Symposium and new lab members

Last July 29^th to August 3^rd 2018, the 37^th international combustion symposium took place in Dublin, Ireland. The meeting was attended by numerous active members of the combustion community that presented the more recent work they are doing. During this meeting our lab was also present, with 4 different presentations. Our former student Sarah Scott presented a paper related to her PhD dissertation entitled “Validation of PMDI-based polyurethane foam model for fire safety applications”. Maria Thomsen presented the works entitled “On Simulating Concurrent Flame Spread in Reduced Gravity by Reducing Ambient Pressure” and “Concurrent Flame Spread over Externally Heated Nomex under Mixed Convection Flow”. Xinyan Huang presented the work entitled “Transition from Opposed Flame Spread to Fuel Regression and Blow off: Effect of Flow, Atmosphere, and Microgravity”.

From left to right: Sarah Scott, Maria Thomsen, Prof. Fernandez-Pello, and Prof. Williams

During the same meeting, Xinyan Huang was awarded with the Bernard Lewis Fellowship by the Combustion Institute, being the first fire researcher to ever win the fellowship. Congrats Xinyan!

Finally, this month we are also welcoming two new members in the CFP lab: Lauren Gagnon and Andy Rodriguez. Lauren did her master with Prof. Carey in the Energy and Multiphase Transport Laboratory and now is working to get her PhD coadvised by Prof. Fernandez-Pello and Prof. Carey. Andy is a former undergrad of the lab. He worked in Tesla for a year and now is back to get his master. Welcome Lauren and Andy!

Graduation Season!

The Spring semester has ended, and this past May two of our lab members participated in the commencement ceremony at the UC Berkeley Greek Theater last May 15.

Sarah Scott finished up her PhD last year, getting hooded by Prof. Fernandez-Pello this May. She will continue working on combustion and heat transfer modelling Sandia National Laboratories.

Maria Thomsen will continue finishing up her dissertation and plans to stay in the lab as a postdoc.

Maria and Sarah during the ceremony

Maria, Prof. Fernandez-Pello, and James during the reception

Prof. Carlos Fernandez-Pello recognized as a Fellow of The Combustion Institute

Prof. Carlos Fernandez-Pello was recently recognized as one of the members of the Inagural Class of Fellows of The Combustion Institute. As dedicated members of the international combustion community, the 125 elected Fellows are recognized by their peers as distinguished for outstanding contributions to combustion, whether it be in research or in applications.

Follow the link below to see the announcement in The Combustion Institute website.

https://www.combustioninstitute.org/news/ci-news-and-announcements/inaugural-class-of-fellows-of-the-combustion-institute-elected/

Prof. Carlos Fernandez-Pello gives Emmons Plenary Lecture at IAFSS 2017

Prof. Carlos Fernandez-Pello delivered the Howard Emmons Invited Plenary Lectureship at the 12th IAFSS International Symposium in Lund, Sweden to recognize his distinguished career achievement.

During his lecture Prof. Fernandez-Pello presented his paper entitled: “Wildland fire spot ignition by sparks and firebrands” which was published in the Fire Safety Journal.

From left to right: Xinyan Huang, Maria Thomsen, Prof. Carlos Fernandez-Pello and Chris Lautenberger

In the same conference, several members of the Combustion Fire Processes Laboratory were also recognized for their work and achievements. Maria Thomsen, current PhD student, was awarded with the Sheldon Tieszen Student Award for her presented paper. The title of the work presented was “Flame spread limits (LOC) of fire resistant fabrics“. Andy Rodriguez, an undergraduate student working in the CFP Laboratory, was awarded with the best poster award.

A former graduate from the CFP Laboratory, Chris Lautenberger, received the Philip Thomas Medal of Excellence as the author of the best paper presented in a previous IAFSS Symposium.