LETTER FROM THE CHAIRMAN
As of the time you are reading this, the hard copies of the 9th IAFSS Symposium volume are on the way to symposium attendees and can be purchased online at the IAFSS website. Perhaps even more significantly, the papers from the symposium have been available online since August and the final archival papers are now online and DOI’s have been assigned. For those of you who missed the 9th Symposium in Karlsruhe, you missed an excellent meeting with high quality papers and programs and wonderful hospitality and social events.

There are so many people who are owed thanks for the success of the meeting. Dieter Brein and his staff did a wonderful job of organizing the meeting; Anthony Hamins and Matt Bundy and their Program Committee and hundreds of reviewers put together a high quality program with great efficiency and excellent peer review; Charley Fleischman put together a first class poster program; Ron Alpert and his writing mentor team assisted numerous authors; Fred Mowrer and his coordinators developed very successful Sunday seminars; Terry Fay provided excellent online support for both posters and papers; Carole Franks guided us through the organizational rough spots; and Bjorn Karlsson and Kristjan Vilhelm Ruriksson have worked with the paper authors to create a first class proceedings. Finally, all the authors, poster presenters, and symposium attendees contributed to an excellent symposium. Thanks to everyone for your contribution to a successful symposium.

I personally have been taking a bit of rest from IAFSS matters since the symposium, but it is now time to move forward with preparations for the 10th Symposium to be held at the University of Maryland in less than two and one half short years. Professors Arnaud Trouvé and Fred Mowrer are already making plans for the 10th Symposium to be held on the University campus. IAFSS Vice Chair Anthony Hamins is handling overall symposium preparations. Professor Nicholas Dembsey has stepped forward to chair the Program Committee, and Professor Mike Spearpoint has taken on the volume editor’s mantle. As you may know, IAFSS plans its symposia well in advance. The 11th Symposium will be hosted by the University of Canterbury in New Zealand in 2014.

We also have a new slate of officers and IAFSS Committee members, who are so far surprised that they have not been pressed to action by the Chair. This will soon pass and we will begin to move the association forward. We also have a new newsletter team headed by editor Jack Watts with support from his team of associate editors; Ali Rangwala, Guillermo Rein, and Patrick Van Hees. As you can see, they are off to a great start.

In this issue of the newsletter we also announce the long anticipated inclusion of the complete set of Fire Research Notes produced by the Fire Research Station from the 1950’s to the 1970’s on the IAFSS database. This addition quickly doubles the online collection to over 2000 papers and we look forward to inclusion of the AOFST papers in the coming months.

We thank the BRE Trust for their cooperation in the development of the online FRN collection and the leadership of Geoff Cox to move the project forward. Terry Fay has also done an excellent job of organizing the collection and making it easily accessible online. Terry has been monitoring use of the website and in the last three months a remarkable 1300 unique visitors from 84 countries have visited the site. Its an excellent start and we expect continuing growth in use.

While IAFSS is moving our technical collection into the electronic age, there is also a need to move our operations into the electronic age as well. This fall we instituted online proceedings purchases and this December we instituted online dues payment for the first time, simplifying the process of joining or renewing membership in IAFSS. We hope to further refine the process further in the future. We hope the combination of online access to papers and the ease of joining will aid in membership growth. We continue to seek new and better ways to serve the IAFSS membership.

Recent news of major wildland and building fires with significant loss of life and property remind us that there is much to be done. IAFSS will be working around the globe to make the fire safety science community a vibrant contributor to the solution of our fire problems.

Craig Beyler

9TH IAFSS SYMPOSIUM

Activities, Attendance, and Sponsors
(contribution from Dieter Brein)

The Symposium was attended by more than 300 participants (amongst these being 250 IAFSS members, non-members, invited speakers and 50 students) many of which presented papers and / or posters during the lectures and poster sessions. The attendees were accompanied by more than 30 companions. While the mostly sunny days in a comfortable climate of a late summer in the Rhine River Valley were filled with exchange of scientific knowledge and new findings, the evenings were left open for social programs. The latter included a welcome reception in the Karlsruhe Novotel, an evening full of fire service related action and artistic skill in and around the big hall of the Baden-Württemberg State Fire School, a musical night with buffet at the State Theater, Mayor’s reception at the City Hall, and the traditional Symposium Banquet which was held in the Center for Arts and Media. So to say, the social programme included both fire service related and cultural environments. From those who did not or did only in part join in the official social programme we could learn that Karlsruhe is also a lovely place to be when you are outside organized events.

Especially for the companions, who besides participating in the evening events also took part in excursions and walk-arounds during the days, we ended up with the impression that new friendships were started even from people who came to Karlsruhe from the same city abroad, but had never met before. And we do hope, that these good connections will hold for the future.

With addresses given during the Opening Ceremony by Mr Heribert Rech, Minister of Interior, Baden-Württemberg State, Prof Horst Hippler, Rector of the University of Karlsruhe(TH) Mr Hans-Jochen Blätte, President , German FPA, and Dr Craig Beyler, Chairman of IAFSS the Symposium was put into line with other large scientific events in Karlsruhe over the years.

The Symposium was also locally made a success through the contribution of many people who gave support to the local committee and to the organization at large. Amongst these are numerous sponsors who helped making the Symposium also a financial success in order to better pursue the objectives of IAFSS related to the improvement of education in fire safety science through several IAFSS programs. Sponsors from Europe and U.S. comprised those who traditionally support the IAFSS Symposia, like NFPA (USA) and FMGlobal (USA), by donations that put them into the range of principal sponsors. Next and not to forget as event sponsor was Rosenbauer International (Austria), and patrons like the Karlsruhe Local Transport System (KVV, Germany), Statens Provningsanstalt (Sweden), VdS Loss Prevention (Germany), Assn. for Rooflights and Smoke Vents (Germany), Assn. of German Insurance companies, German Rigid Polyurethane Foam Manufacturers' Association, and Baden-Württemberg State. Lest we forget the co-host, German Fire Protection Association (Vereinigung zur Förderung des Deutschen Brandschutzes, VFDB).

To summarize from the viewpoint of the Local Committee Chair, we were all pleased to have such a friendly fire science community in our city and we are grateful to everybody who came to make friends and the 9th International IAFSS Symposium a success.

Technical Program
The Symposium included the Emmons Lecture, several plenary lectures, oral paper presentations, two poster sessions, and a full-day of technical workshops on the Sunday before the Symposium. There were a total of 202 papers submitted to the 9th Symposium. Papers were submitted on a broad range of topics including:

• Structural Fire Performance
• Compartment Fires
• Fire Modeling
• Suppression
• Ignition
• Flame Spread
• Flames and Fire Dynamics
• Toxic Hazard
• Fire Chemistry
• Material Burning
• Fire Measurements and Test Methods
• Detection
• Evacuation, Human Behavior, Statistics, Probability, and Risk Analysis Smoke Control
• Special Applications (explosions, industrial fires, post-earthquake fires, standards, safety codes, tunnel fires, fire safety management, fire investigation and reconstruction, fire service needs, soot)

Each paper presentation was followed by a brief discussion period moderated by the Session Chairs. The discussion periods were typically lively, and facilitated free flowing dialog on technical questions.

To improve the quality of the Proceedings, the allowed length of papers was increased substantially as compared to previous Symposia (35% increase in print area through an increased page size). For those papers that may have benefited from English language editing, a team headed by Ron Alpert offered such assistance (see report on the Writing Mentor Program below). Final versions of the papers were submitted to the Volume Editor, Dr. Björn Karlsson.

The overall quality of the papers in the Symposium was very high. This was due to the efforts of many people including submitting authors, technical reviewers, session chairs, those making oral and poster presentations, and the local Symposium Committee. The Program Committee thanks all who contributed to make the technical program a success!
Program Committee:
• A Hamins, Chair
• M Bundy, Deputy Chair
• C Fleischmann, Poster Chair
• KE Boyce
• WK Chow
• NA Dembsey
• J-M Franssen
• TR Hull
• J Hietaniemi
• J Milke
• A Sekizawa
• M Simonson
• JL Torero
• H-Z Yu
• D Yung

2008 IAFSS Awards
Following the Association’s tradition, the 2008 IAFSS and FORUM Awards were presented at the banquet of the 9th Symposium in Karlsruhe.

Dr Vytenis (Vyto) Babrauskas was presented with The Howard W. Emmons Plenary Lecturership Award for his innovative leadership in fire safety science. The Award, which comprises a plenary lecture delivered at the Symposium by the recepient, was bestowed by the Association’s Chairman, Dr Craig Beyler, on the recommendation of the Programme Committee of the 9th Symposium. Babrauskas’ lecture was entitled “Research on electrical fires: The state of the art”. The Award also comprises a summary plaque with a new name added after each Symposium, an honorarium of US$1000 and a lecturership plaque to be kept by the awardee. Babrauskas’ professional experience has included working as a civil engineer designing roads and bridges and as a laboratory instructor in physics. Most of his career has been devoted to fire protection engineering research. For over 16 years, Babrauskas conducted research in this area at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, formerly known as National Bureau of Standards.

During his years at NIST he has managed research groups in the areas of flammability test development, upholstered furniture flammability, and fire toxicity. In 1993 he formed Fire Science and Technology Inc., a firm specializing in fire safety R&D and in consultancy on various aspects of fires and fire tests. Babrauskas is a ranking international authority on the measurement of heat release from fires. In 1982 he developed the Furniture Calorimeter, which has become the medium-scale test method specified in NORDTEST and Underwriters Laboratories standards. Babrauskas has published over 250 papers and reports in the field of fire protection engineering. His textbook Heat Release in Fires is the first and only book on this important subject.

The Kunio Kawagoe Gold Medal was awarded to Professor Geoffrey Cox. The Medal, which signifies one’s life-long contribution to fire safety science, is actually bronze with a gold appearance. It entitles the recipient to free travel to and free registration at the Symposium. The awardee was selected by the Awards Committee, chaired by Professor Mario Fontana and composed of Professors Patrick Pagni and W.K. Chow and Pierre Joulain. The first Kunio Kawagoe Gold Medal was awarded to Alex Robertson at the 4th Symposium, next was Philip Thomas, and then Harold Nelson, followed by Dougal Drysdale and Sizuo Yokoi at the 8th Symposium in Beijing. Cox, who is a former technical director of the Fire Research Division of

BRE, charted the development of models - from the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models first produced in the 1960s, to field-zone network models developed in the early 1990s, through to the present large eddy simulation (LES) models in wide use today and the new direct numerical simulation models. A physicist by training, he has lectured and published widely and was the Chairman of the ISO Technical Committee TC92 on Fire Safety. Professor Cox is a founder member of the International Association for Fire Safety Science.

A team of researchers from the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, which included Timo Korhonen, Simo Hostikka and Olavi Keski-Rahkonen, were honoured with The Phillip Thomas Silver Medal of Excellence for the best paper published at the 8th Symposium in Beijing. Their contribution, titled “A proposal for the goals and new techniques of modelling pedestrian evacuation in fires”, has developed a new evacuation modelling of ‘panic’ situations and interaction between evacuation simulation and the state-of-the-art fire simulation.

At each Symposium the Association presents the Best Thesis Awards - Excellence in Research for best research dissertations at PhD and Masters levels. There are three such awards for the three IAFSS Regions, Asia and Oceania, Europe and Africa, as well as the Americas. The Best Thesis Awards – Excellence in Research were established in 2002, with the first recipients honoured at the 8th Symposium in Beijing. The Award consists of a plaque and grant of US$1500 to travel to the Symposium and free registration at the Symposium. The recipients are expected to present papers derived from their theses at the Symposium.

The distinguished recipients of the 2008 Best Thesis Awards – Excellence in Research included Johannes A.W. Dimayadi of The University of Canterbury in New Zealand, Dr Markus Knobloch of ETH, in Zurich, Switzerland, and Dr Ali S. Rangwala of the University of California, in San Diego, USA.
The Sjölin Awards are described below in the FORUM report.

Workshops
Three very informative and successful workshops were held on the Sunday afternoon before the start of the 9th Symposium in Karlsruhe. This was the first time such workshops have been held in conjunction with an IAFSS
Symposium. The coordinator was Fred Mowrer, University of Maryland, and the workshop topics and organizers include:

Flame spread modelling. N Dembsey, WPI, and S Hostikka, VTT.
Structural fire engineering. S Lamont, Arup San Francisco/Dubai
Egress modelling. S Gwynne, Hughes Associates

All three workshops were well-attended and feedback from the participants was overwhelmingly positive. Congratulations to the organizers for a fine job. Following is a participant comment on one of the workshops.

Short Report on the Structural Fire Workshop
The Structural Fire Workshop organised by IAFSS provided a valuable opportunity for both consultants and researchers in the field to discuss their opinions regarding current practices, techniques and future research opportunities. The workshop provoked good discussion by specifically addressing an issue which relates not only to structural issues, but also fire dynamics and the role that it plays as a fundamental input to structural analyses. It brought together those involved in both sides of the storey as it were - a feature that is commonly lost when a conference creates parallel sessions that effectively separate the two, or indeed separate conferences entirely.

The workshop also provided a good platform for different presentation topics. It was well structured and organised to introduce the topic with an overview of the subject followed by a series of technical presentations and case studies that reflected how the field of structural fire engineering has evolved, is currently being applied in industry and where it may be heading in the future.

Not only did the workshop provide an insight into various aspects of structural fire engineering, but it provided a context into which they could be put. This in itself is valuable for young researchers to appreciate how their work can influence designs in the wider world.

by Allan Jowsey, Arup Fire London

Poster Session
The program committee would like to thank all of the poster authors’ for their contributions to the 9th IAFSS Symposium. Over 100 posters and images were displayed in two poster session at the symposium. Both sessions were very well attended with discussions continuing long after the formal close of the sessions. The quality of the posters was obvious to all attendees and by all accounts the poster sessions were a great success.

Five awards were given out for the poster and images. The five member committee had a very difficult time making their decisions. We congratulate the following award receipts:

Best Poster Award
A Physics-Based Simulation Model of Post-Earthquake Fire Spread - Selina Lee and R A Davidson

Best Student Poster Award
Entrainment Characteristics of the Thermal Spill Plume - Roger Harrison and Michael Spearpoint

Audience Choice Award - Best Poster
Coal Mine Fires: Characterization and Extinguishing Methods Using Small-Scale Experiments - Rory Hadden and Guillermo Rein

Best Fire Research Image Award
Sprinkler Discharge Characteristics - Ning Renm Andy Blum, Chi Do, Yinghui Zheng and Andre Marshall

Audience Choice Award – Best Fire Research Image
Pool Fire – Frédéric Vigroux, Stéphane Moreau and Hugues Pretrel

Writing Mentor Program
As described in IAFSS Newsletter No. 24, February, 2008, Ron Alpert coordinated a new Writing Mentor Program for the 9th IAFSS Symposium. Based on reviewer comments, the program chairs identified papers that were going to be accepted for the symposium and could be improved significantly by having clearer English communication. To achieve this communication improvement, the identified papers would be reviewed by a writing mentor assigned by Ron based on having interests and expertise in a similar area of fire science as the authors. The writing mentors were drawn from a group assembled by Ron during the time when symposium papers were undergoing the initial peer review. In spite of a few glitches resulting from Ron or mentors or authors not following up with each other in a timely manner, the initial trial of this program was a great success. Of 12 manuscripts initially identified as benefiting from mentoring, one was withdrawn after the review process, one was never mentored due to an unresponsive author and one author was excused from the process due to illness and a vacation conflict. The remaining 9 manuscripts were successfully mentored, with suggestions accepted by authors and the final manuscripts accepted by the program chairs.

In addition, because so many people had responded to the initial request for mentor volunteers, Ron was able to distribute an announcement to all symposium authors telling them of the availability of a mentoring program.

Three authors responded to this announcement and their manuscripts were mentored successfully for the symposium. It is expected that if the mentoring program were to be implemented at future symposia, even more manuscripts could be processed if the responsibilities of the mentor and author were more clearly defined, if the mentor coordinator followed up periodically with each participant and if the final due date for finished manuscripts could be somewhat more flexible..

Proceedings
Proceedings of the Ninth International Symposium have been printed and are being shipped to participants. Papers are also available online at the IAFSS bibliographic web site (see information below). The printed proceedings will also be available for purchase at the IAFSS web site www.IAFSS.org

IAFSS BUSINESS MEETINGS
The IAFSS Committee met on 21 September and immediately subsequent to the IAFSS business meeting on 25 September. Following are the Nominations Committee report addressed at the 21 September meeting, excerpts from the Treasurer’s report at the business meeting and a report from the secretary on the Committee meeting of 25 September.
Report of the Nominations Committee
In October of 2007, a Nominations Committee was established by Craig Beyler, the Chairman of IAFSS. The members of the Nominations Committee were Jim Mehaffey (Chairman), Guylène Proulx, Ulf Wickström, Yaping He and Jose Torero. The role of the Nomination Committee was to identify what IAFSS Committee membership nominations were required and then to make the relevant nominations.

The Nomination Committee first surveyed the existing members of the IAFSS Committee to determine their interest in continuing to serve. The results of the survey indicted that we needed to nominate 8 new members: 4 in the Americas; 2 in Europe/Africa; and 2 in Asia/Oceania.

The Nomination Committee chose to select these 8 new nominees in the following fashion. A list of recommendations for nominations was compiled from input received during the survey of existing members of the IAFSS Committee and input provided by members of the Nominations Committee. The Nominations Committee then held an internal vote to arrive at its nomination of the 8 new members: 4 in the Americas; 2 in Europe/Africa; and 2 in Asia/Oceania.

These 8 proposed new members together with the 16 existing members who had agreed to continue to serve formed the following slate of nominees for the IAFSS Committee:

1. Dr V Babrauskas Fire Science and Technology, USA)
2. Dr C Beyler (Hughes & Associates, USA
3. Mr D Brein (University of Karlsruhe, Germany)
4. Prof W Chow (Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China)
5*. Prof N Dembsey (Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA)
6. Prof B Dlugogorski (University of Newcastle, Australia)
7. Prof D Drysdale (University of Edinburgh, UK)
8. Dr C Fleischmann (University of Canterbury, New Zealand)
9*. Prof G Hadjisophocleous (Carleton University, Canada)
10. Dr A Hamins (National Institute of Science and Technology, USA)
11. Prof Y Hasemi (Waseda University, Japan)
12. Dr Y He (University of Western Sydney, Australia)
13*. Dr B Merci (Ghent University, Belgium)
14*. Prof F Mowrer (University of Maryland, USA)
15. Prof P Joulain (National Centre for Scientific Research, France)
16. Dr B Karlsson (Fire Authority, Iceland)
17. Dr S Kumar (Building Research Establishment, UK)
18. Dr G Proulx (National Research Council, Canada)
19. Dr A Sekizawa (National Research Institute of Fire and Disaster, Japan)
20*. Dr M Simonson (SP Technical research Institute, Sweden)
21*. Prof J Sun (University of Science and Technology, China)
22*. Prof T Tanaka (Kyoto University, Japan)
23*. Dr C Wieczorek (FMGlobal, USA)
24. Prof J Torero (University of Edinburgh, UK)

* Denotes candidates nominated to the Committee for the first time. The remaining candidates are members of the present Committee and have been re-nominated by the Nominating Committee for the new term

Treasurer’s Report

Membership Numbers per year

Secretary’s Report
Meeting of the Committee of the IAFSS
- 25 September 2008

Present: Dr Vyto Babrauskas, Dr Robert Bill (by invitation), Mr Dieter Brein, Prof W K Chow, Prof Nicholas Dembsey, Prof Bogdan Dlugogorski, Prof Dougal Drysdale, Dr Charley Fleischmann, Prof Mario Fontana (by invitation), Ms Carole Franks (by invitation), Prof George Hadjisophocleous, Dr Anthony Hamins, Dr Yaping He, Prof Patrick van Hess (co-opted, entered the meeting as described under point 3), Dr Björn Karlsson, Dr Bart Merci, Prof Fred Mowrer, Dr Ai Sekizawa, Prof Jinhua Sun, Prof O Tanaka and Dr Christopher Wieczorek
1. The meeting was opened by Dr Craig Beyler who reported no apologies and thanked everyone for attending.

2. On invitation of Dr Beyler, Prof Dougal Drysdale, the past Chairman of the Association, presided over the election of the new Officers of the Association.

The following Officers were nominated and elected by acclamation:

Chairman: Dr Craig Beyler
Vice Chairman (Americas): Dr Anthony Hamins (with responsibility for IAFSS programs)
Vice Chairman (Asia/Oceania): Prof Bogdan Dlugogorski (with responsibility for IAFSS awards)
Vice Chairman (Europe/Africa): Prof Jose Torero (with responsibility for member services)
Treasurer: Dr Christopher Wieczorek
Secretary: Dr Ai Sekizawa
Executive Member: Mr Dieter Brein
Executive Member: Prof Fred Mowrer

The Executive Committee of the Association also includes the Past Chairman of the Association, Prof Dougal Drysdale.

3. Immediately, after the election of the Officers, Professor Drysdale moved that " Professor Patrick van Hees be co-opted to the Committee for the three-year term in order to develop IAFSS goals in the are of education". The motion was seconded by Dr Björn Karlesson, and passed unanimously. Professor van Hees was invited to join the Committee. He entered the room and participated in the remainder of the deliberations.
Prof Bogdan Dlugogorski
Past Secretary, IAFSS

OTHER IAFSS NEWS

10th International Symposium – June 2011
The Department of Fire Protection Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park (USA), is preparing to host the 10th International Symposium of the International Association for Fire Safety Science (IAFSS). The IAFSS Symposium will be held on campus on 20-24 June 2011. The University of Maryland is located in the Washington DC area and benefits from convenient air access, and is close to many tourist attractions and places of interest, in Washington, Baltimore and Annapolis. If you would like more information on the arrangements for the upcoming Symposium, please contact Professor Arnaud Trouvé at atrouve@umd.edu or visit the IAFSS website at www.iafss.org.

IAFSS Bibliographic Website Update
The archival version of the 9th symposium papers are now online, including page numbers ad DOI registration. Authors can now obtain the full citation to their papers via the website. IAFSS papers are available for download by IAFSS members. If you are a member and do not have an account to the IAFSS Bibliographic Website, please contact the IAFSS secretariat at iafssmembers@dial.pipex.com.

In cooperation with the BRE Trust (http://www.bretrust.org.uk) and with the efforts of Geoff Cox, the collections of Fire Research Notes are now available online. The Fire Research Notes are publicly available and can be accessed from the main page of the website (http://iafss.haifire.com). Full text searching was added for these notes. However, the condition of some of the earlier notes makes them difficult for the OCR software to read. As such, the results of the full text search may be limited. I recommend keeping your search terms as simple as possible. If you happen to have a copy of a FR Note that is in better condition than the one available on the site, please let me know so we can make arrangement to update the copy available on the site.

Next up on our list is the proceeding from the Asia-Oceania Symposium on Fire Science & Technology (AOFST). Once the indexing is complete, the site will be updated and a notice will be sent out to all members notifying them that the AOFST papers are available for download.
The general statistics on the site usage have been most encouraging. Google is reporting over 1300 unique visitors from 84 countries/territories between November 2008 and January 2009. On average, there are over 100 new visitors each week. We appear to be growing steadily and I am interested to see how the addition of the Fire Research Notes will affect our growth. –
Terry Fay tfay@haifire.com

Educational Committee
At the recent board meeting of IAFSS it was decided to invest extra efforts with respect to the educational subcommittee within IAFSS. During this spring a discussion forum will be established to obtain feedback from the members on the future role and tasks of this subcommittee and the needs from our members. The work will be coordinated by Prof. Patrick Van Hees with assistance of Dr. Björn Karlsson. There will also be a need to update the information at the IAFSS website. So keep yourself updated and give us feedback later this year.
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FORUM Update
The International Forum of Fire Research Directors (FORUM) is a group of the directors of fire research organizations throughout the world whose aim is 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 focus is identifying strategic partnerships to advance Fire Safety Engineering, FSE, through scientifically-based knowledge of fire; validated computational tools; sound and reliable supporting data; and recognized professional status for the discipline of FSE with appropriate training and education. The research of FORUM member organizations supports advances in all aspects of FSE with the intent of influencing national and international standard setting authorities and improving society's ability to reduce and manage the risks of fire and the costs of fire safety.

The FORUM develops position papers to highlight issues that it feels are of significant societal need but are not being sufficiently examined by the international fire research community, or are stalled in controversy and would benefit from clarity provided by a consensus document from an international organization such as the FORUM. Papers have been published over the past few years in the Fire Safety Journal that present the FORUM positions on performance-based design for fire code applications, small-scale measurements for next generation standards, improving road tunnel fire safety, verification and validation of numerical fire models, evaluation of structural fire resistance, and global acceptance of products and services.

The Sjölin Award, sponsored by the FORUM, recognizes an outstanding contribution to the science or practice of fire safety engineering and is presented to the individual or group whose efforts are primarily responsible for or traceable to the specified advance. Geoff Cox was the recipient of the 2006 Sjölin Award, for his lifetime achievements across the spectrum of fire safety science and his leadership during his long tenure at BRE Richard Gann of NIST was recognized in 2007 for his outstanding contributions to increased fire safety through the development of standards to reduce the ignition propensity of cigarettes and of methodologies for selecting fire suppressants for aircraft applications. Andrew Buchanan of the University of Canterbury, NZ, received the award in 2008 for his widely acknowledged leadership in merging fire safety science with structural design. All three were honored at the 9th IAFSS in Karlsruhe and presented with a plaque and honorarium by the secretary-treasurer of the FORUM, Franco Tamanini of FM Global.

The FORUM introduced a new award to assist students with travel-related expenses toward their attendance at the 9th IAFSS Symposium in Karlsruhe, Germany. FORUM Student Travel Award nominees must be lead author on a paper accepted for presentation at the 9th IAFSS Symposium and be enrolled in an academic course of study.

The Award was given to Sung-Han Koo, University of Edinburgh and consists of a plaque and a USD $2,000 cash payment to assist the recipient with travel-related expenses. A runner-up award comprising a plaque and a cash payment of USD $1,000 was given to Sebastian Ukleja, University of Ulster.

The FORUM has four new members: Ulrich Krause of the Federal Institute of Materials Research and Testing (BAM) in Berlin, J. C. Kapoor of the Defence Research & Development Organization (CFEES) in New Delhi, Tuula Hakkarainen of VTT in Finland, and Joshiyuki Matsubara of the National Research Institute for Fire and Disaster (NRIFD), Tokyo. This brings the membership to 19 organizations representing Europe, North America, and Asia/Pacific. William Grosshandler of NIST was elected chair and J. Russell Thomas of NRC-Canada was elected deputy chair at the most recent meeting held in September, 2008, hosted by Ulf Wickström of SP in Borås, Sweden. The next meeting is scheduled for October, 2009, in Seoul, hosted by Hyun-Joon Shin, Korea Institute of Construction Technology (KICT).

Activities of the FORUM and copies of its position papers are available online at http://www.fireforum.org/.

Combustion Institute (Upcoming Events)

April 6-7, 2009: Chicago, IL, USA Fire 2009: Flammability & Combustibility in Building Materials http://www.principiaconferences.com/
April 8, 2009: Munich, Germany Technology Awareness Day: Advances in Mixing and Combustion http://www.ercoftac.org/index.php?id=990
April 14-17, 2009: Vienna, Austria Fourth European Combustion Meeting ECM 2009
http://www.ecm2009.at/
April 26-28, 2009: Naples, Italy, Combustion Colloquia dedicated to Prof. Antonio D'alessio http://www.combustioninstitute.it/next/comb2009.htm
May 17-20, 2009: Ann Arbor, MI, USA, 6th U.S. National Combustion Meeting http://www.cssci.org
May 24-27, 2009: Taipei, Taiwan, China, 7th Asia-Pacific Conference on Combustion
http://aspacc2009.me.ntu.edu.tw/
June 2-4, 2009: Barcelona, Spain, Women's International Research Enginering Summit (WIRES)
http://www.wires.gatech.edu
June 7-11, 2009: Porticcio-Ajaccio, Corsica, France, 6th Mediterranean Combustion Symposium
http://www.ichmt.org/mcs-09July 8-10, 2009: Minsk, Republic of Belarus, 5th International Scientific and Practical Conference "Emergency Situations: Prevention and Elimination"
http://www.niipb.by/index.php
October 18-21, 2009: College Park, MD, USA, 2009 Fall Technical Meeting of the Eastern States Section of the Combustion Institute http://www.essci-fall09.umd.edu

AOFST
Preparation for 8th AOFST is on the way. More information will be in the next newsletter. The Fire Safety Engineering 2009 Conference, which is organised by Society of Fire Safety, Engineers Australia, will take place in March.
http://www.sfs.au.com/documents/FSE09_IC_Sponsorship_DL1.pdf

Fire Protection Research Foundation (FPRF)
FPRF activities are reported on elsewhere in this newsletter under, Upcoming Events, Publications, and Conference Reports. The latter summarizes the Foundation’s 25th Anniversary Symposium. More information is available at http://www.nfpa.org/foundation.
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Eastern Kentucky University, College of Justice & Safety
The Department of Safety Security and Emergency Management is please to announce an opening for a tenure track faculty position beginning January 5th, 2009. This position will teach a minimum of 4 classes per semester (12 hours) in the undergraduate on-campus and on-line fire and safety engineering technology programs, with primary emphasis in Fire Protection Administration. Candidates should possess at least a Masters degree in fire, safety or related area with a minimum of 5 years of fire service experience. Candidates who have college teaching experience in the following areas are preferred: Chemistry of Fire, Fire Dynamics, Fire Administration, Fire and Emergency Scene Operations, Fire Service Leadership, Fire Protection Systems, Hazardous Materials and other related fire and emergency courses. Appropriate fire related certifications are essential.