Director-Extreme Lab, Wildland fires, remote sensing, machine learning, Fire dynamics, advanced modeling, technology in firefighting

Director, Extreme Environments, Robotics and Materials Lab, Co-director TREC Lab, Advisor to 30+ graduate students and 50 undergraduate students in research projects. Performed computational and experimental research on the thermal and structural response of materials at high temperatures, solid phase kinetics of materials for phase transformation and burning, gas phase kinetics, heat transfer from fires, fire dynamics modeling, model reduction, and disaster response and safety-related technology (including humanoid firefighting robot (SAFFiR), humanoid for disaster response at DARPA Robotics Challenge 2015, range finders and vision systems for low visibility conditions, fire feature classification, autonomous suppression of fires, autonomous location of fires).• University Proposal Development Institute, Faculty Group Mentor, 2015• ME Faculty Search Committee, 2014-2015 (3 faculty hired)• ME Department Head Search Committee, 2014-2015 (1 department head hired)• ESM Faculty Search Committee, 2013-2014 (1 faculty hired)• ME Faculty Search Committee, 2013-2014 (2 faculty hired)• ME Productivity Committee, 2012, 2013, 2015• ME Graduate Program Committee, 2013-2015• Reviewer, ME Senior Design Projects (Final Assessments), 2012-2015• ME Graduate Student Recruiting Weekend, 2007-2015.• ME, ABET Report Contributor, Course Evaluations ME 3124 (2009), ME 3614 (2013).• Host of ME Graduate Seminar, Use of the Virginia Tech Library with Larry Thompson, September 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012.https://www.cbsnews.com/news/navy-testing-robot-that-could-fight-fires-aboard-ships/

Develop and guide the safety science research of the company. Supervise and manage senior and staff engineers to formulate computational tools, experimental analysis techniques, and test methods for solving safety-related problems. Oversee projects that require advanced computational and experimental methods to provide safety solutions.

Supervised and managed staff engineers to conduct projects for fire safety in transportation, DoD, forensics, and commercial applications. This included performing experiments and developing models for material fire property characterization, ignition and burning, flame spread, fire growth, thermo-structural response, water mist suppression, foam suppression, and smoke generation and movement.