This Jacobs School alum predicts wildfire behavior

Jacobs School alum Michael Gollner was recently featured on Discovery Channel Canada's Daily Planet, where he explained fire tornadoes and spoke about his research. Gollner was a graduate student in the research group of Professor Forman Williams, where he studied fire behavior, including in warehouses. From a press release from the University of Maryland, where Gollner is now an assistant professor:

Gollner demonstrated several experiments he and his group use to predict wildfire behavior, including extreme events such as the fire tornado, also known as a fire whirl.

"There are still so many things we can discover and learn that will save people's lives," he explains in the segment. "[We're] trying to understand how the fire actually jumps between...fuels and spreads and grows...And if we can understand that, we might be better able to predict where the fire is going to go."

You can watch the segment on Gollner's research here.

Gollner has been keeping himself busy. Here are a few things he has going on, according to a recent email:

• ongoing NSF grant with collaborators at UCSD on real-time wildland fire predictions (http://wifire.ucsd.edu)
• another ongoing grant with WPI and DHS on firefighter safety in green or sustainable buildings (http://www.gollnerfire.com/2013/09/25/prof-gollner-and-marshall-receive-department-of-homeland-security-grant-on-green-buildings/)
• a seed grant looking into wildfire emissions from the University of Maryland (http://www.gollnerfire.com/2014/03/17/tracking-the-long-term-cost-of-wildfire-emissions/)
• An NFPA Research Foundation project on Hybrid Fire Suppression Systems just published: http://www.gollnerfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Hybrid-Suppression-Systems-Final-Report-2.pdf
• I'm offering a new wildland fire course in the fall (http://www.gollnerfire.com/2013/12/18/new-wildland-fire-course-to-be-offered-in-fall-2014/).