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Results of the Nominating Committee's actions
The following individuals have been nominated, as indicated, by the Section Nominating Committee, which consisted of Sam Dannaway; Guylène Proulx, and Nick Dembsey.

• Chair, Daniel O'Connor, Schirmer Engineering Corporation
• Vice Chair, Guylène Proulx, National Research Council of Canada
• Secretary, Jill Wellens, Hughes Associates
• Executive, Steve Kerber, NIST
• Committe, Brian McDonald, SGS U.S. Testing Company

At Large (2009-2011)

• Nominating, Anthony LaPalio, Vollmer-Gray Engineering Laboratories Inc.
• Committee (2009-2010), Thomas Hales, M.D., CDC/NIOSH                                               

The following Executive Committee members continue their terms: Karen Carpenter and Cmdr. Joe Miranda, At-Large members; and Dan Madrzykowski, as Past Chair.

Additional candidates may be nominated by petition of 10 members of the section. Any petitions must be received by Rita Fahy at NFPA no later than Monday, February 16, 2010.  Election ballots will be mailed by Friday, February 27, and will be due back by Wednesday, April 15.

Note also: The annual business meeting of the Research Section will take place during the week of June 8th, at the NFPA Conference & Expo (time and place to be determined), McCormick Place, Chicago.  Please plan to attend and discuss candidate presentations to be sponsored by the Section at future meetings and other efforts intended to build the Section.

The links below are to organizations, typically government sources, not-for-profit labs, and educational institutes, that conduct fire research and have posted research results or updates on their Web sites. If you know of a useful link you would like to share, send the address with a brief description to rfahy@nfpa.org.

The Bureau of Home Furnishings and Thermal Insulation regulates upholstered furniture and bedding sold in California to make sure they meet health, fire safety, and labeling standards. Information can be found on the law and regulations the Bureau enforces, including Technical Bulletin 603, Requirements and Test Procedure for Resistance of a Mattress/Box Spring Set to a Large Open Flame, which went into effect on January 1, 2005.

The latest research news from the Institute for Research in Construction (IRC) of the National Research Council of Canada can be found at this link, from which you can also link to the IRC publications database. The search engine can be used to find fire research papers that are downloadable in PDF format.

The Fire Research Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has a Web-based quarterly newsletter that provides updates on research at NIST, as well as other fire research organizations around the world. Past issues are available for viewing or downloading. This newsletter is a joint effort with the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Fire Administration. Visitors can register to have the new issues e-mailed to them automatically.

The Fire Research Station of the Building Research Establishment has compiled a list of research papers written between 1994 and 2002 that are available here for you to download.

Lund University’s Department of Fire Safety Engineering has a publications Web page that contains research reports and dissertations, available in both Swedish and English, that can be downloaded as PDF files.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently released a user-friendly series of spreadsheet applications with useful calculation routines, Fire Dynamics Tools (FDT^s) Quantitative Fire Hazard Analysis Methods for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Fire Protection Inspection Program (NUREG 1805, Final Report).

Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s Web page offers an electronic collection of publications and dissertations by members of its Fire Protection Engineering Department from 1986 to the present.