Awards

The IAFSS makes the following awards every 3 years and is managed by the IAFSS Awards Committee. Details are provided below:

• Howard W. Emmons Invited Plenary Lectureship
• Kunio Kawagoe Gold Medal
• Philip Thomas Medal of Excellence
• FORUM Student Travel Awards for the IAFSS Symposium
• Best Thesis Award “Excellence in Research
• Dougal Drysdale Award for Extraordinary Service to the IAFSS
• Poster and Fire Science Image Awards

The Howard W. Emmons Invited Plenary Lectureship

• 1984 J.L. de Ris
• 1985 E.E. Zukowski
• 1986 J.G. Quintiere
• 1988 K. Kawagoe (Medal associated with IAFSS for the first time)
• 1991 P.H. Thomas
• 1994 O. Pettersson
• 1997 T. Jin
• 1999 Y. Hasemi
• 2002 P.J. Pagni
• 2005 H.R. Baum
• 2008 V. Babrauskas
• 2011 T. Tanaka
• 2014 Professor Michael Delichatsios

Kunio Kawagoe Gold Medal

The picture to the right was taken by Dr Philip Thomas; it captures well Professor Kawagoe’s character.

Award Eligibility and its Privileges
The Kunio Kawagoe Gold Medal is awarded by the IAFSS as a prestigious recognition of life-long contributions to and career achievements in fire science and engineering.

Nomination process

Nominations are sought from IAFSS members. Please send nominations, including a justification, and contact details of the proposer to Professor Takeyoshi Tanaka (takey.tanaka@gmail.com) by September 1, 2016. The justification should not exceed two pages in length and should describe the nominee’s accomplishments and their significance. Self-nominations are not accepted. A nominee may or may not be a member of IAFSS, while the proposer must be a member. Nominations are confidential and should not be disclosed to a nominee.

Selection considerations

The past recipients of the Kunio Kawagoe Gold Medal made significant and lasting contributions to fire science and engineering through innovation and impact of their publications. Their research findings frequently led to paradigm shifts in fire regulations, in fire standards and in practical applications of fire safety science and engineering around the world. Some past recipients trained research students and young fire safety engineers, produced important textbooks and monographs, and often dedicated themselves to fire safety education. They were active in the international fire safety community.

Selection Body

The recipient of the Award will be selected by the IAFSS Awards Committee

Professor Kunio Kawagoe

Professor Kunio Kawagoe pioneered the development and use of scientifically based fire analysis, developing the relationship between the compartment burning rate and the size of an opening (Rb = 5.5•A•h0.5), in a seminal paper on compartment fire modelling published in 1958. His contributions, especially on fuel-controlled compartment fires and the structural analysis of the fire induced effects in columns and beams, laid foundation to modern fire science and engineering, and underpinned the early development of performance-based fire safety design, especially in Japan. Professor Kawagoe was the Director of the Building Research Institute between 1969 and 1973, when he was appointed Professor in the Faculty of Science and Engineering at the Science University of Tokyo. His career included appointments of the Deanship of the Faculty at the Science University of Tokyo in 1980 and, in 1986, the Directorship of the Centre for Fire Science and Technology. He served as an IAFSS Vice-Chairman from its founding in 1985 until 1991. Professor Kawagoe was a role model and dedicated teacher of young fire safety engineers. He passed away in 1994. (Extracted from T Ishii, Fire Science and Technology 14, 1994, pp i-ii, and from In Memoriam, Proceedings 5th Fire Safety Symposium, 1997, p vii.)

Past Recipients

The Medal was first awarded at the 4th IAFSS Symposium in Ottawa in 1994. Its past recipients include:

• Dr Alexander Robertson (1994, 4th Symposium, Ottawa)
• Dr Philip Thomas (1997, 5th Symposium, Melbourne)
• Mr Harold “Bud” Nelson (1999, 6th Symposium, Poitiers)
• Professor Dougal Drysdale (2002, 7th Symposium, Worcester)
• Professor Sizuo Yokoi (2005, 8th Symposium, Beijing)
• Professor Geoffrey Cox (2008, 9th Symposium, Karlsruhe)
• Professor James Quintiere (2011, 10th Symposium, Maryland)
• Professor Ian Thomas (2014, 11th Symposium, Christchurch)

Philip Thomas Medal of Excellence

Award, Eligibility and its Privileges

Philip Thomas Medal of Excellence is awarded to the author(s) of the best paper presented at a previous IAFSS Symposium. The award consists of a silver medal and a plaque for each author. The medal is cast from the reverse of a silver tetradrachma minted in Athens in 400 BC, at the time of Socrates and Plato. The central images are an olive spring, symbolising peace, and an owl, symbolizing wisdom. The international synergism of our Association is reflected in this Athenian design, suspended from a ribbon of Gosen white silk, presented in a medal box from the San Francisco mint.

Nomination Process There is no nomination process, as the Award recognises the best paper presented at the previous Symposium.

Selection considerations
The five criteria used to identify the best paper are:

• Pertinence Is the paper pertinent to the aims of the Association? Does it epitomise “a forum dedicated to all aspects of fire research and their application to solving problems presented by destructive fire”? 
• Utility Are the results useful? Will this work save lives? Will it enhance fire service efforts? Will it lead to new areas of research? Will it be incorporated into standards and codes? 
• Significance Does it add significantly to our knowledge? Are there new results? Are they both accurate and important? 
• Rationality Does the paper link experiments and theory? Have the results been both verified and explained? Does the work display wisdom, logic and intellectual insight? 
• Eloquence Is the paper well written? Is there a worthwhile story which is described in a concise yet readable manner?

Selection body
The best paper presented at the previous symposium will be selected by the IAFSS Awards Committee. The Award will be announced at the following Symposium.

Dr Philip H Thomas
Dr Thomas worked in fire safety research at the Fire Research Station (subsequently part of the Building Research Establishment) for over thirty years, from the early 1950s to the mid 1980s. In that time he published numerous Fire Research Notes and over thirty journal papers on fire phenomena, many of which are still regularly cited today. Since retiring from the Fire Research Station in 1986 he has remained active in fire research and continues to publish in Fire Safety Journal and elsewhere. The importance of his contributions to the field cannot be overstated. It was once said that he worked on almost every problem related to fire from spontaneous ignition, to wildland fires and from statistical analyses to fire modelling. He was a convener of TC 92 in ISO and W14 for the CIB. He was the founding Chair of IAFSS. He worked at a time when journal publications were not so numerous, but his writing mostly contained in Fire Research Notes show his prolific nature and his boundless interests. The new researcher to fire would be lacking not to have read the works of P H Thomas.

Past Recipients
The Medal was first awarded at the 2nd IAFSS Symposium in Tokyo in 1988. Its past recipients, titles of their papers, and Symposia at which the Awards were presented, are listed below

• 1988: Y Hasemi, “Thermal Modeling of Upward Flame Spread” (2nd Symposium, Tokyo)
• 1991: H Baum and B McCaffrey, “Fire Induced Flow Field – Theory and Experiment” (3rd Symposium, Edinburgh)
• 1994: A Atreya and M Abu-Zaid was entitled “Effect of Environmental Variables on Piloted Ignition (4th Symposium, Ottawa)
• 1997: B Dlugogorski, J Mawhinney and V Duc, “The Measurement of Heat Release Rate by Oxygen Consumption Calorimetry in Fires” (5th Symposium, Melbourne)
• 1999: R Rehm, K McGrattan, H Baum and K Cassel, “Transport by Gravity Currents in Building Fires” (6th Symposium, Poitiers)
• 2002: J Garo, P Gillard, J Vantelon and A Fernandez-Pello, “On the Thin Layer Boilover” (7th Symposium, Worcester)
• 2005: D Weinert, T Cleary, G Mulholland and P Beever, “Light Scattering Characteristics and Size Distribution of Smoke and Nuisance Aerosols” (8th Symposium, Beijing)
• 2008: T Korhonen, S Hostikka and O Keski-Rahkonen, “A Proposal for the Goals and New Technique of Modelling Pedestrian Evacuation in Fires” (9th Symposium, Karlsruhe)
• 2011: Ning Ren, Andrew Blum, Ying Hui Zheng, Chi Do and Andre Marshall, The University of Maryland, USA, for their paper titled “Quantifying the Initial Spray from Fire Sprinklers” (10th Symposium, Maryland)
• 2014: Dr. Hong-Zeng (Bert) Yu, FM Global, USA, for his paper titled “Physical Scaling of Water Mist Suppression of Pool Fires in Enclosures” (11th Symposium, Christchurch)

FORUM Student Travel Awards to the IAFSS Symposium

These Awards are sponsored by the International FORUM of Fire Research Directors (http://fireforum.org/), a group of the Directors of fire research organisations throughout the world, which aims to reduce the burden of fire (including the loss of life and property, and effects of fire on the environment and heritage) through international cooperation on fire research. The award recognises excellence in an IAFSS symposium paper in the field of fire safety science by a student making a significant contribution to that paper.

Award eligibility and its privileges Each FORUM Student Travel Award consists of a plaque and a US$1,250 cash payment to assist the recipient with travel-related expenses toward their attendance at the IAFSS Symposium. It is intended that four awards will be offered, for a total of US$5,000, with one award in each of the following broad areas of fire research:

• Fire Physics and Fire Modelling
• Fire Chemistry and Fire Toxicity
• Test Development, Diagnostics and Large Scale Experiments
• Human Factors and Risk Assessment

To be eligible, a student needs to be enrolled in an academic course of study at the time the paper is required to be submitted to the Symposium Program Committee. Recipients must also present their papers at the Symposium.

A student will normally be the lead author on the paper accepted for presentation at the IAFSS Symposium. If a student is not named as the lead author, a letter from the senior author is required to itemise the student’s contribution to the paper.

Nomination Process
The corresponding author needs to indicate at the time of paper submission that the paper is to be considered for the FORUM Student Travel Award, and that a nominee is the lead author.

Selection Considerations
The winners will be selected by the IAFSS Awards Committee from papers accepted for presentation at the 10th IAFSS Symposium. A list of student papers will be provided to the Awards Committee by the Symposium Program Committee. The Award Committee may decide at its discretion not to select winners in all areas, increasing the amount of the awards available in the remaining areas. The Awards committee will judge the papers on their quality; i.e., on the originality, clarity, and potential impact on practical or theoretical applications of fire safety science. Consideration may also be given to students who would not be able to attend the Symposium without additional support, and who will travel to attend the Symposium from remote regions.

The winners of the FORUM Student Travel Awards will be announced approximately a month after the authors receive notification of acceptance of their papers for presentation at the Symposium. The recipients will be honoured at a ceremony held during the IAFSS Symposium, with the Awards formally presented at that time.

Selection Body The recipient of the Award will be selected by the IAFSS Awards Committee.

Past Recipients

2008: Sebastian Ukleja, The University of Ulster, UK  and Sung-Han Koo, The University of Edinburgh, UK (9th Symposium, Karlsruhe)

2014: Nicholas L. Brogaard and Martin X. Sørensen, for “A New Experimental Rig for Oil Burning on Water – Results for Crude and Pure Oils,” in the area of Test Development, Diagnostics and Large Scale Experiments.

Best Thesis Award “Excellence in Research”

Award, Eligibility and its Privileges

The IAFSS Best Thesis Award “Excellence in Research” recognises the best research thesis at PhD and Masters levels, in all the fields related to fire safety science and engineering. There are three such Awards for the three IAFSS regions, Europe and Africa, Americas, as well as Asia and Oceania.

To be eligible for nomination, the nominee’s thesis must have been officially submitted to the university granting the degree for examination between January 1^st, 2014 and November 31^st, 2016 and nominated for the Award by the nominee’s supervisor, as described below.

Each recipient must deliver, at the 12^th Symposium, a paper drawn from his/her thesis. The recipient will be asked to prepare a paper, as per submission guidelines of the 12^th Symposium, based on the material included in the thesis and not published in the Symposium or other peer reviewed archival publication.

The Award consists of a plaque, a grant of US$2,000 to cover travel and sustenance related to the recipient’s attendance at the 12^th Symposium in Lund, Sweden, and free registration for the Symposium.

The Award consists of a plaque, a grant to cover travel and subsistence related to the recipient’s attendance and a free registration at the Symposium.

Nomination Process

The following documents need to be submitted by email by the nominee’s supervisor to Professor José L. Torero, The University of Queensland, Australia, j.torero@uq.edu.au, by midnight the 15^th of December, 2016, UK time:

• A letter of recommendation by the nominee’s supervisor not to exceed 2 pages;
• A pdf copy of the thesis (preferably in English; if not available, in its original language);
• An abstract of the thesis in English (no longer than three pages);
• A list of publications. The list should comprise journal articles (including those that have been submitted for publication, whether accepted or not), and conference publications (indicating the form of review; no review, by Abstract, by full paper). Publications in preparation or draft should not be listed;
• Pdf preprints or reprints of up to three best papers derived from the nominee’s thesis (conference papers can be included) can be submitted but are not compulsory.
• If the thesis is not written in English, at least one paper in English shall be submitted.
• Submission subject to confidentiality requirements should be accompanied by an explanation from the supervisor indicating which sections of the thesis cannot be made public or submitted for review. The requirement for the recipient to deliver a presentation at the 12^th Symposium cannot be waived; therefore, this explanation has to include a clear indication of which sections will be presented at the Symposium.

Only one thesis can be submitted for award from a given University or Institution. When more than one thesis is of sufficient quality for submission for the Award, a preliminary selection must be carried out locally and the nominee’s supervisor needs to explicitly describe in the letter of recommendation the local selection process. If more than one thesis is submitted by a single institution the nominators will be asked to withdraw the submissions voluntarily and explain the reasoning behind the selection. If more than one thesis remains submitted by 31^st of December 2016 (midnight, UK time) then none of the submissions from that institution will be considered. All submissions will be confirmed upon reception.

Selection considerations 

The four criteria used to select the best thesis include:

• Pertinence: Is the thesis’ subject matter within the scope of the field of fire science and/or engineering?
• Quality: Are the methodologies applied in the thesis sound and correct? Is the thesis well written?
• Significance: Do the results of the thesis add to our present knowledge? Are the results new, accurate, useful and important?
• Impact: Do the results of the thesis have a broad impact in the fields of fire science and/or engineering?

Selection Body

The recipients of the IAFSS Best Thesis Award “Excellence in Research” will be selected by the IAFSS Awards Committee. The Awards Committee will nominate a Chair for the Best Thesis Award who will call upon three co-chairs (one representing each region). Each co-chair will request at least one independent review by an expert in the subject of the thesis. Chair and co-chairs will rank submissions based on their assessment and the information provided by the independent reviewer.

The recipients will be contacted by the first week of March, 2017.

The Awards will be formally announced at the 12^th Symposium in Lund, Sweden in June 2017.

Past Recipients
IAFSS Best Thesis Award “Excellence in Research” was first presented at the 8th IAFSS Symposium at Tsinghua University in Beijing in 2005. Its past recipients are listed below:

2005: (Europe and Africa) Susan Lamont, The University of Edinburgh, UK, PhD Thesis; (Americas) Amnon Bar-Ilan, University of California, Berkeley, USA, PhD Thesis; (Asia and Oceania) Weng Wenguo, Waseda University, Japan, PhD Thesis

2008: (Europe and Africa) Markus Knobloch ETH, Zurich, Switzerland, PhD Thesis; (Americas) Ali S. Rangwala, University of California, San Diego, USA, PhD Thesis; (Asia and Oceania) Johannes A.W. Dimyadi, The University of Canterbury, NZ, Masters Thesis

2011: (Europe and Africa)  Angus Law, for the thesis titled “The Assessment and Response of Concrete Structures Subject to Fire”, The University of Edinburgh, UK (2010); (Americas) Christopher Lautenberger, for the thesis titled “Generalized Pyrolysis Model for Combustible Solids”, University of California, Berkeley, USA (2007). (Asia and Oceania) Kai Chen, for the thesis titled “Formation of Toxic Pollutants in the Thermal Decomposition of the Sulfenimide Fungicides”, The University of Newcastle, Australia (2011).

2014: (Europe and Africa) Dr Thomas Gernay, for the thesis titled “A multiaxial constitutive model for concrete in the fire situation including transient creep and cooling down phases,” Université de Liège, Belgium (2012), (Americas) Dr Kristopher James Overholt, for the thesis titled “Forward and Inverse Modeling of Fire Physics Towards Fire Scene Reconstructions,” The University of Texas at Austin, USA (2013), (Asia and Oceania) Dr Chao Zhang for the thesis titled “Reliability of Steel Columns Protected by Intumescent Coatings Subjected to Natural Fires,” Tongji University, China (2012)

Honorable Mentions: Dr John Gales, for the thesis titled “Unbonded Post Tensioned Concrete Structures in Fire,” University of Edinburgh, UK (2013), Dr Mélanie Rochoux for the thesis titled “Towards a more comprehensive monitoring of wildfire spread Contributions of model evaluation and data assimilation strategies (Vers une meilleure prévision de la propagation d’incendies de forêt: Evaluation de modèles et Assimilation de données),” CNRS et École Centrale Paris, France (2014), Dr Steven Verstockt for the thesis “Multi-modal Video Analysis for Early Fire Detection (Analyse van multimodale video voor vroegtijdige branddetectie),” Universiteit Gent, Belgium (2012).

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Dougal Drysdale Award for Extraordinary Service to the IAFSS

 Award, Eligibility and its Privileges

The IAFSS has many dedicated volunteers who contribute to the health and success of IAFSS. The Drysdale Award honors extraordinary service to IAFSS. The award is selected by the Chair of the IAFSS Committee and is presented at each IAFSS Symposium.

The award is named in honor of Dougal Drysdale, Professor Emeritus at the University of Edinburgh for his many contributions to IAFSS and the fire safety science community. As the author of three editions of An Introduction to Fire Dynamics, the long time editor of Fire Safety Journal, a section editor of the SFPE Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering, a long time member of the faculty of the University of Edinburgh, and as a member and chair of the IAFSS Committee, Dougal has provided technical, educational, and organizational leadership in our field over his long and productive career. In all his many contributions to our field, his generosity in helping others is always in evidence.

Past Recipients

2011: Terry Fay, Hughes Associates, Inc. In recognition of his development of the IAFSS Digital Archives System

2014: Dr Amanda Robbins: “In recognition of her development of a new federated search tool, the IAFSS Fire ReSearch Engine”, Dr Ron Alpert: “In recognition of his work leading the English Mentoring Program.”, Dr Craig Beyler: “In recognition of his long service to the IAFSS Committee, especially for initiating open access to Association archives, expanding the IAFSS membership, leading the 2014 Nominating Committee, and for mentoring members of the IAFSS Committee.”

The first award winner was Terry Fay for his development of the IAFSS digital archives system. Terry was the architect of this on-line collection of over 2000 papers from Fire Safety Science, the Proceedings of the Asia-Oceania Symposium on Fire Science and Technology, and the Fire Research Notes collection from the old UK Fire Research Station. Terry also spearheaded the integration of Fire Safety Science into the DOI/CrossRef system. These efforts have been an important element of bringing IAFSS into the digital age.

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Poster and Fire Science Image Awards

IAFSS Best Poster Award

• 2011 Mr. Michael Gollner (University of California, San Diego), X. Huang (UCSD), A. Rangwala (WPI) and F. Williams (UCSD): “An experimental study of upward flame spread over inclined fuels”
• 2014 Sung Chan Kim, Jung Yong Kim and Dong Myeong Ha for “An Experimental and Numerical Study of the Effect of Flow Angle on the Probe Constant of Bi-Directional Velocity Probe for Fire Testing” (Kyungil University and Semyung University, Korea)
• 2014 Sullivan Lechêne, Romain Morlon, Elizabeth Blanchard, Caroline Rebuffat, Gilles Parent, Zoubir Acem, Anthony Collin and Pascal Boulet for “On real radiative shielding effect when applying water mist in case of fire.” (CSTB and Université de Lorraine, France).

IAFSS Best Student Poster Award

• 2011 Mr. Cristian Maluk (The University of Edinburgh), L. Bisby (The University of Edinburgh), G. Terrasi (EMPA Dubendorf) and M. Green (Queen’s University): “Bond Strength Degradation for CFRP Bars and Steel Prestressing Wires in Concrete at Elevated Temperature Fire Behaviour of Novel Concrete Structural Elements”
• 2011 Ms. Nele Tilley (Ghent University), S. Van de Vel and B. Merci (Ghent University): “CFD parameter variation study for smoke extraction in smallscale atria”.
• 2014 Xinyan Huang and Guillermo Rein for “Computational Modelling of Smouldering Peat Fires: Predicting the Role of Moisture and Inert Contents” (Imperial College, London)
• 2014 Cristian Maluk, Luke Bisby and Jose Luis Torero for H-TRIS: Quantified, reproducible and rational thermal exposures for fire testing

Best Fire Science Image Award

• 2011 Mr. Michael Gollner (University of California, San Diego), X. Huang (UCSD), F. Williams (UCSD) and A. Rangwala (WPI): “Fan of Fire” (reproduced on the front cover of this newsletter).
• 2014 Egle Rackauskaite, Xinyan Huang and Guillermo Rein (Imperial College, London, UK) for the image entitled “Fire Watch Constellation.”
• 2014 James White, Eric Link, Taylor Myers, Andre Marshall and Peter Sunderland (University of Maryland, College Park, USA) for the image entitled “Oxidizer Dilution Quenching of a Turbulent, Methane Line Flame.”