Sept. 24, 2025

219 - Giving back with the SFPE Foundation - with Leslie Marshall

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In this episode, we give focus to the SFPE Foundation – a catalyst transforming how fire engineering research is funded, conducted, and shared globally. In this conversation with Leslie Marshall, Interim Executive Director of the SFPE Foundation, we discover how a relatively small organization has distributed over $1.2 million in grants, scholarships, and research funding since 2021. While the Foundation has existed since 1979, its recent expansion with dedicated staff has accelerated its impact across the fire engineering community worldwide.

Leslie reveals the Foundation's unique position in the fire safety ecosystem – while SFPE maintains the gold standard for current practice, the Foundation focuses on emerging topics and future challenges. This forward-looking approach has funded groundbreaking work, such as, in my opinion, landmark David Morissette's research on furniture fire variability, which began with a modest $5,000 student grant but yielded findings that challenge fundamental assumptions in fire modeling.

The conversation explores the Foundation's flagship Grand Challenges Initiative, a 10-year collaborative effort addressing four critical areas: energy and infrastructure, resilience and sustainability, climate change, and digitalization/AI/cybersecurity. With over 40 industry and academic partners worldwide, this initiative exemplifies how bringing diverse perspectives together can tackle complex problems that no single entity could solve alone.

For researchers, students, and professionals looking to give back to the fire safety community, Leslie outlines multiple pathways for involvement – from financial contributions to volunteering on advisory panels or working groups. The Foundation's commitment to open access ensures all research findings are freely available, maximizing their impact across the field.

You can learn more about the foundation on its website here.

Additional resources can be found here:

The 2026 WUI Summit: https://www.sfpe.org/2026wuisummit/home
The WUI Handbook: https://www.sfpe.org/wuihandbook/home
Grand Challenges Initiative website: https://www.sfpe.org/gci/home

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The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.

00:00 - Introduction to SFPE Foundation

04:00 - Leslie Marshall's Role and Foundation Overview

07:46 - Foundation Funding Sources and Impact

11:33 - Student Grants and Research Support

24:27 - Grand Challenges Initiative Explained

35:30 - GCI Fellowships and Working Groups

42:42 - Foundation's Approach to Research Funding

51:45 - Upcoming Events and Future Plans

56:19 - Closing Thoughts and Reflections

WEBVTT

00:00:00.040 --> 00:00:01.647
Hello everybody, welcome to the Fire Science Show.

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You know that a big part of my professional life is participation in SFPE and that's the Society of Fire Protection Engineers.

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I've spoken about this on the podcast.

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I had the CEO, Chris Jelenewicz, on the podcast.

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But there's one activity of the SFPE or SFPE-related activity that we have not covered yet and even in the recent discussion with Chris, we both agreed that this topic has to be covered separately.

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That's SFPE Foundation, and we believe that SFPE Foundation is best discussed with the interim executive director of the SFPE Foundation, Leslie Marshall.

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And here we are today with Leslie on air discussing the history, role and plans for future of the SFPE Foundation.

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But it's not just a bland episode where someone just tells you a list of things about what the foundation is doing.

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During this interview, I had two important questions in mind that I really wanted to get an answer for.

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One is if I want to spend money on research, that is, I am happy to give some money forward that someone does research, and it's not necessarily a product or development for me, it's just for the sake of improving the knowledge of the mankind.

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What's the best way to do that?

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It's not simple.

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You can have grants that are worth millions which led nowhere.

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You have grants that costed 5,000 bucks and they made a huge impact on what we're doing every day.

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So I think Leslie is a good person to discuss this with, because she is constantly spending money and, given that the foundation has limited funds, they have to become very efficient at doing that.

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And the second thing is you know the idea of giving back doing that.

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And the second thing is you know the idea of giving back.

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I really wanted the listeners to hear about all the ways that you can give back to the community, not just in terms of money.

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Money is perhaps the easiest way to involve, but you know, participation in committees, in award committees, helping with the grant assessment, etc.

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All those things are ways to give back.

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You know, and we all ended up in this profession by accident of some sort a very happy accident for most of us and I can say for all of us.

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I think we all love it and if specific circumstances have not occurred 20 years ago for me, I would not be in here today and I'm just happy and I'm grateful to all the people that helped me back then, that held my hand, and today I want to help the ones that come after me.

00:02:27.770 --> 00:02:39.500
So, yeah, the idea of giving back is very important to me and in this episode you will hear a lot about the ways you can give back, and those two things were in my mind when I was carrying this episode with Leslie.

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You tell me if we got the answers for them and I will let you assess that straight after the intro.

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Let's spin the intro and jump into the episode.

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Welcome to the Firesize Show.

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My name is Wojciech Wigrzyński and I will be your host.

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00:03:20.020 --> 00:03:23.189
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00:03:46.584 --> 00:03:50.355
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00:03:55.629 --> 00:03:56.812
And now back to the episode.

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Hello everybody, I'm joined today by Leslie Marshall, the Interim Executive Director at the SFPE Foundation.

00:04:03.864 --> 00:04:07.426
Hey, leslie, hey, it's good to be with you, happy that you took my invite.

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I had an interview with Chris Jelenewicz, the CEO of SFP.

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We scratched the ground of SFPE Foundation and I immediately realized this requires its own episode.

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And here we are super happy to talk about all the great stuff that's happening at the SFPE Foundation and ideas behind it.

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Perhaps a good place to start is if you could introduce the SFPE Foundation to the listeners and perhaps what distinguishes it from the SFPE itself.

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It's a great place to start, so happy to do that.

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So many people may not be aware that the SFPE Foundation has actually been around.

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Many people may not be aware that the SFPE Foundation has actually been around.

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It's existed since 1979, but we only hired our first full-time dedicated staff in March of 2021.

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So it's been grants and scholarships and awards, and now we do more than $300,000 per year in each of the last two years and in fact, actually we've done about $1.2 million in terms of grants, scholarships, awards and research projects just since 2021.

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So if you think about that, just since bringing on staff, you know we've had a lot of work taking place and all of that is going back into the fire engineering community globally, right, so we're investing back and supporting the work that people are doing all over the world, and so that's an exciting thing to be a part of.

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We have a fantastic board of governors, fantastic staff and, of course, a lot of support from SFP, from Chris and from SFPE staff or from the SFPE board of directors.

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So I think a good place to call out there is that the foundation is a separate charitable, nonprofit organization from SFPE behind the scenes and things, and also, you know we do coordinate with SFP.

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So as we support different research initiatives, different projects, different things, you know we're constantly, you know all of that is sort of going back in service of the SFPE community more broadly.

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All of our board members are SFPE members, right, so we've got a lot of really close ties there and I think a good way to sort of distinguish between what SFPE does and what the foundation does, if you think of SFPE as sort of the gold standard for the state of practice for fire engineering, right, they produce the SFPE handbook, they produce a lot of education on, you know, really, the state of the discipline in terms of the knowledge that folks should have and things like that.

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And think about the foundation.

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You know we're an educational and scientific foundation.

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Our mission is to enhance the scientific understanding of fire in the social, natural and built environments and we do that primarily by funding research and education that's really focused on emerging topics, emerging technologies, emerging issue areas.

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We're really thinking about sort of that future forward, that future-oriented mindset.

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So we're looking at the ways that we can really close research gaps to support the profession or folks doing this work globally.

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So it's really about the foundation of sort of pushing those boundaries.

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And once those topics become a state of practice they sort of get absorbed into what you find an SAP.

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We'll talk more about how you turn funds into very high quality research in a second.

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Into very high quality research in a second, I'm wondering.

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And your funding?

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What are the sources that fuel this 1.2 million given out in grants?

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Where does it come from?

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It's a great question.

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It's an important question.

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It's an important question.

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And especially for us because we do a lot of fundraising.

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So a big part of my job and the folks that work in the foundation is to secure funds to be able to then in turn, fund projects and fund research and things like that.

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So we have a pretty diverse portfolio in terms of the different sources of funding for the foundation and we really rely on that.

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We're intentionally looking at that.

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So funding comes from individual donations, so individuals can donate any amount.

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We have folks who donate what they can and folks who donate larger amounts, people who've been perhaps well-served by their career as fire engineers.

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They want to give back.

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They can make individual donations to the foundation.

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That's always appreciated and, as I said, any amount.

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It all goes to a good place.

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We're very efficient stewards of the funds that we have.

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We also receive donations from SFPE chapters.

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SFPE chapters all over the world contribute, again typically based on what the chapter can afford to do.

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We have some very large chapters and we have some smaller chapters and again, every little bit makes a difference.

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And again, every little bit makes a difference and so those SFPE chapters can give and be recognized for that giving in the form of acknowledgments and so forth on social media, but also at the SFPE annual conference and in other ways.

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So we really do appreciate that chapter giving.

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And we also have corporate donors.

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We have some companies that give what we call pure philanthropic gifts to the foundation.

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So they give to the general fund or to our annual operating fund to support the work that we do, and that of course, supports operating costs but it also supports research projects and the grants that we give out.

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And, finally, we are also an organization that seeks grant funding support specific projects.

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So we will apply for grants ourselves when we have a specific project in mind that we want to fund, and particularly if it needs a larger amount of funding, and so we have a number of grants from the US federal government that support some of that work.

00:09:31.139 --> 00:09:39.926
Good portfolio of funds coming and obviously yeah, I mean I wanted to do this podcast episode one because I know the foundation.

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I know some of the great projects.

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I've hosted students who visited my lab because of foundation grants.

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I've seen how helpful it was to them.

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I simply support this idea or this concept of providing people with opportunity, especially that fighting for funds in fire safety is very challenging when you are a part of broader mechanical or civil engineering, challenging when you are a part of broader mechanical or civil engineering.

00:10:07.243 --> 00:10:10.369
For us in Europe, panel number eight, you fight with people who try to cure cancer.

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They send drones to other planets and discover new nanomaterials.

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This is our panel, so that's what we compete with.

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So having a you know, a fire oriented fund, you at least know that this is going to go towards the fire research which, whatever it is, is probably great.

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But outside of great things that the foundation is doing, I also know a lot of people are perhaps interested in simply giving back.

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Like you said, some people are better served than others by the profession.

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It's a lovely world to be a part of the fire world and eventually a lot of us end up in a position where they would like to simply give back a little bit of what served them, and for me, my way of giving back is through the podcast.

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Some others could engage in educational activities or engage directly.

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Not everyone has time to do that, so perhaps you know giving back through charitable organization like the SFPE Foundation, philanthropy and etc.

00:11:03.153 --> 00:11:10.169
That's perhaps the simplest way you know to give back, and at least we know that you guys are going to do a great job.

00:11:10.169 --> 00:11:20.273
So, in the spirit of that, let's discuss all the great things that the foundation is doing and boy, I have a lot on my list, from the awards through grant challenges, educations.

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Let's maybe start with the student grants and student support.

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How is the foundation performing that and how students can actually reach out and what's in the offer for them?

00:11:33.139 --> 00:11:33.341
Yes.

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So I would say that as an organization we're really committed to supporting students, and I think part of that goes back to what you were saying about, you know, people who are in the more advanced stages of their career.

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Look back on the people who gave them a hand early on, the people who reached out, the people who introduced them to fire engineering, right, and so I would say there's a really strong commitment from the foundation, from our board, to supporting that next generation of fire engineers.

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So we have a lot of programming that's for students, right, that's for folks in undergraduate and graduate programs, to give them that sort of level, that next step up right, to be able to support that.

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And we do that through a number of ways.

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So the two main ways are we have student research grants.

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We have a student research grant program.

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Those grants are $5,000 each and we do about eight of them a year right now, and we do them typically in two rounds.

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So we have usually an application process where proposals are due around April and then a second one where they're due in October, so students can apply in two different cycles for those grants.

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Those $5,000 may not seem like a lot on its face to some people, right, it's not going to sort of fund a PhD in their studies, but that $5,000 can make a really big difference to your point.

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When there aren't other sources of dedicated funding, it's hard to get.

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These are kind of unique projects, sometimes really interdisciplinary.

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How do you find your home for that sort of funding?

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And we have some really great examples that highlight the impact of that fund.

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So I'm thinking, for example and I know his work has actually influenced your work but now Professor David Morissette, who's one of this year's recipients of the 2025 Foundation, the Bono Award for the Foundation to Recognize the Best Article in the Prior Years Issues of Fire Technology.

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David's project that won the bono award right this year started with an SFPE foundation student research grant back in, I think, 2021, um, so that that grant actually funded the purchase of the 25 chairs that he burned in that experiment.

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So that that award-winning paper is called repeat fire tests of upholstered furniture variability and experimental observations right, and he had this idea.

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You know that you could.

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We make a lot of assumptions based on one or one off experiments about how things behave when they burn and this idea what happens if we burn the exact same item in the exact same conditions many, many times.

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Does it burn the same way?

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And it turns out it doesn't.

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And that has all these implications for things that we rely on in the fire engineering profession, right when it comes to setting parameters and expectations around fire behavior and so on, and so it's a really, I think, potentially impactful contribution, and it came out of a relatively small grant.

00:14:19.254 --> 00:14:42.687
As you said, for me it's a very important piece of work, Not because I'm a fan of burning chairs, but David was able to formalize a very interesting thought that the phases of fire could be connected to events that happen in the course of fire, not necessarily to the time that has passed, but to the fact that an event has happened.

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And I think this is extremely like.

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This is a paradigm shifting formalization.

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So, and then and yeah, I've been on a SFPE conference in Berlin.

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I was chairing the session he was presenting there and it was like, oh, like, this is awesome, like where else you can, you know, send up a grant that, yeah, I would like to burn a shitload of chairs, like Gucci, like, help me purchasing those.

00:15:07.129 --> 00:15:09.763
That's such a crazy idea, you know.

00:15:09.763 --> 00:15:14.514
And sometimes this is the perfect amount of funding for those people.

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I had students visiting my laboratory.

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I had Diego from Spain, ifa from Malaysia, who spent some time at the ITB with the SFPE student fund.

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There's $5,000.

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It's maybe not that much money, but it allows you to fly to Poland and spend one, two months in the lab and we will take care of you when you take the effort to come and visit us.

00:15:38.767 --> 00:15:46.739
So I think, while it was again again on the paper, not a huge grant like if you put it in your you know cv.

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It's not a massive uh, you will not get massive points for that on your cv but it really allows you to to do a lot with that and I I think if you're smart about where those funds go and I don't like from I'm now speaking from the experiences of my students the formalities were not really annoying, like it was a fairly easy grant because I also, you know, as a senior researcher, I have my own experience with different funding foundations and it's not necessarily always easy, especially when it comes down to you know, some accounting on where the money went from, all the proofs, the invoices and everything.

00:16:25.034 --> 00:16:27.703
It's sometimes so annoying, even for small grants.

00:16:27.703 --> 00:16:31.885
From what I've heard, it was not annoying at all with SFP.

00:16:31.885 --> 00:16:49.691
So I hope you do not introduce too many formal boundaries to those poor students and if anyone listening has an idea about some research grants that you would like to do and perhaps my lab is something that could be useful for you, hey, let's get in contact and you can try.

00:16:49.691 --> 00:16:53.225
It's harsh competition but it's achievable.

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Anything else for students in your plate.

00:16:56.534 --> 00:17:05.423
Yeah, so I would say I'm glad to hear you say that, because we do spend a lot of time trying to make the process as easy and efficient as possible for people to be able to apply.

00:17:05.423 --> 00:17:06.808
We really don't want there to be barriers.

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Creating barriers to access to the funding is not helpful, and so we tried to do our best to really make it accessible.

00:17:13.215 --> 00:17:14.919
It's also like 5K.

00:17:14.919 --> 00:17:23.484
I mean, yeah, if they waste it, basically what they've wasted is a possibility for someone else to do a nice research project.

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But it's not the end of the world.

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And you know, putting barriers in front to make sure to prevent waste or prevent like a wrongful use of the funds, sometimes just prevents the good use of the funds very much.

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That's my experience with the funding agencies.

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It is really counterproductive.

00:17:41.796 --> 00:17:47.259
So I mean we have enough boundaries and limits in our world.

00:17:47.259 --> 00:18:09.637
Like call out is now Dr Natalia Flores-Kiraz's work at Stellenbosch University in South Africa.

00:18:09.699 --> 00:18:13.232
But she also back in 2020, received a student research grant.

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We want to talk about the impact of a single grant, that grant.

00:18:16.105 --> 00:18:39.479
She ended up doing research on the development and application of forensic investigation procedures for informal settlement fires, ended up publishing at least three I think even more than that peer-reviewed journal articles specifically on informal settlement fires, covering topics from WUI fires all the way to human behavior to non-building fires, fire dynamics all kinds of topics touched on there.

00:18:39.479 --> 00:18:43.414
But she then you talk about getting the ball rolling in your career right.

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This is something that awards do.

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This is something grants do, no matter how small right, you get that first one and it can really create a sort of snowball effect in your career and being able to get new opportunities and the next opportunity and so on.

00:18:55.605 --> 00:19:11.402
So I think you know we can really be a catalyst in that way, and that work that she did there ended up setting her up really well in her work and she later in 2023 was named one of the first Grand Challenges Initiative fellows for resilience and sustainability for that working group.

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So she then had a fellowship from the foundation to support her work in the GCI resilience and sustainability working group, co-authored the white paper that came out of that and now co-chairs that working group and has a senior lecturer position now at Stellenbosch.

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And I would say, something that's really lovely to see for someone like me is when someone comes through the system, she's now a professor.

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Now she's writing recommendation letters and sponsoring students who are applying for student research grants, right.

00:19:39.300 --> 00:19:48.557
So you see someone who's really had a great start to their career and now she's supporting students coming out of that program and they're doing fantastic things at Stellenbosch.

00:19:48.557 --> 00:19:50.803
So it's really good to see.

00:19:50.803 --> 00:19:52.026
That's another good example.

00:19:52.067 --> 00:19:55.343
So there's GCI fellowship program, student research grants.

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We also just last year formalized a student travel grant program.

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So now, one of the things we talk about with these projects, right, we don't want, you know, just to have research that ends up in a report or ends up in a journal.

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That never has sort of that connection to practice.

00:20:11.644 --> 00:20:33.145
So we do a lot of work to try and raise awareness of the takeaways from these projects, the results and so on, and we also want to give the students, the researchers who've completed the projects, a chance to present those projects in front of their peers at the SFPE annual conference or similar conferences or events where they can benefit from getting a lot of eyes on that work.

00:20:33.145 --> 00:20:42.712
Getting to network, build relationships that face-to-face at conferences is huge for their potential career trajectory.

00:20:42.712 --> 00:20:52.527
You never know who you're going to meet, and so we've got this fund now where students can apply to receive travel grant funding to attend SFPE and SFPE Foundation affiliated events and present their work.

00:20:52.527 --> 00:20:56.063
So it's really great to see that, too Is there a catalog of those events?

00:20:56.103 --> 00:20:58.516
How does an event become SFPE affiliated?

00:20:58.915 --> 00:21:16.941
I understand that the SFPE conferences are by it's in their name, but yes, so any event that's hosted by SFPE or SFPE foundation would count, and then we do allow people to propose another relevant event, so it would need to be relevant to fire engineering and the work that they're doing in some way.

00:21:16.941 --> 00:21:40.218
I will say, though, going back to how people can support the foundation Currently currently, we receive far more requests, far more requests for travel grant funding than we can support, than we can afford to support, and so we prioritize those who are going to present at SFPE and SFPE foundation affiliated events, and, to date, you know that has taken up all of our resources just to fund those requests.

00:21:40.218 --> 00:21:53.782
So, if you are listening and you want to make an individual donation or you belong to a company that would like to, we do have ways for companies to direct donations specifically to the Student Travel Fund to support that, because it's certainly in high demand.

00:21:54.236 --> 00:22:09.901
Yeah, I can imagine perhaps we'll need to have an off-the-record conversation with IFSS because I think IFSS and European and Asia Shania fire symposia could be interesting things for people and they would love to travel there.

00:22:09.901 --> 00:22:12.403
They're also like, usually quite expensive to travel.

00:22:12.403 --> 00:22:17.222
The planet is quite large actually, and those are large distances.

00:22:17.515 --> 00:22:22.134
And we know travel costs are only going up right the cost of flights hotels, all of these things.

00:22:22.134 --> 00:22:28.307
So you know, if the same dollar today isn't worth, doesn't go as far as it did, you know, yesterday kind of thing.

00:22:28.307 --> 00:22:31.003
But the events you named are absolutely appropriate.

00:22:31.003 --> 00:22:35.287
We would consider IFSS, of course, as an appropriate place for us to support travel.

00:22:35.287 --> 00:22:38.906
It's just that today we need to raise some more funds so we can support.

00:22:39.414 --> 00:22:40.977
There's also the student award.

00:22:40.977 --> 00:22:48.284
I remember Matt Bonder won that one 2020, for research we've done together, so I was super proud of Matt.

00:22:48.284 --> 00:22:51.067
They did a great job on our database.

00:22:51.067 --> 00:22:54.569
I remember working on that in my office with them on that.

00:22:54.569 --> 00:22:56.011
It was such a fun.

00:22:56.011 --> 00:22:58.838
We were very happy with this award.

00:22:58.838 --> 00:23:00.084
So another great thing for students.

00:23:00.084 --> 00:23:03.243
Anything else, or shall we move to grant challenges?

00:23:03.855 --> 00:23:26.789
Well then, I would just highlight, on the awards for folks, that we have several different awards for students and so, especially if you do human behavior research the Prue Award we are always looking for folks to apply for that award and then, if any other topic, you would be eligible under the Student Scholar Award or under the Mauer Global Scholar Award, depending on where you're located.

00:23:26.789 --> 00:23:28.221
So please do apply.

00:23:28.221 --> 00:23:35.894
Those are also easy application processes as far as these things go, so please encourage folks to apply and apply if you're listening and you're a student.

00:23:36.556 --> 00:23:40.843
And I also always encourage people to nominate their colleagues, encourage people to nominate their colleagues.

00:23:40.843 --> 00:23:50.419
Being in some of those award committees not in the foundation, but in general the awards are always given from the pool of candidates.

00:23:50.419 --> 00:24:05.737
There are a few awards, like your Bono Award, where you look into the entirety of our technology journal, but most of the awards are given to someone from a smaller group of candidates, exactly, and if someone is not a candidate, it kind of excludes them, right?

00:24:05.777 --> 00:24:08.906
You cannot win if you don't put your name in for contribution.

00:24:08.906 --> 00:24:10.781
So please what's the?

00:24:10.781 --> 00:24:11.103
Harm.

00:24:12.797 --> 00:24:14.461
If you feel like someone deserves it.

00:24:14.461 --> 00:24:17.567
If you don't put them forward, they will never get it.

00:24:17.567 --> 00:24:20.183
If you put them forward, they may get it.

00:24:20.183 --> 00:24:24.125
So, yeah, that's an important caveat of awards.

00:24:24.125 --> 00:24:27.843
Let's talk about the Grand Challenges, because that was a very interesting thing.

00:24:27.843 --> 00:24:28.744
When did this start?

00:24:28.744 --> 00:24:29.547
Like three years ago.

00:24:29.547 --> 00:24:31.080
It felt like a COVID project.

00:24:31.536 --> 00:24:32.298
Around that time.

00:24:32.298 --> 00:24:34.265
I really kicked things off in 2022.

00:24:34.265 --> 00:24:38.125
So the Grand Challenges initiative is a flagship initiative for us.

00:24:38.125 --> 00:24:49.436
Fundamentally it's a 10-year effort and we say 10 years but really that's because we want to focus people on the future and on the next 10 years, but we anticipate this effort going beyond that.

00:24:49.436 --> 00:25:05.501
But it's a 10-year effort to achieve collaboration between academics, industry, research, partners around shared areas of interest, shared priorities when it comes to investing strategically in research and education and outreach.

00:25:05.501 --> 00:25:11.994
That's going to advance the field of fire protection engineering or fire engineering on topics that are not unique to fire engineering right.

00:25:11.994 --> 00:25:23.576
So, when we think about global grand challenges, the four topic areas that are part of that initiative include energy and infrastructure, not specific to fire engineers, but where fire engineers have a lot to say and be involved in.

00:25:24.317 --> 00:25:34.359
Resilience and sustainability, climate change, and then digitalization, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity is its own working group, and so we kicked off that initiative in 2022.

00:25:34.359 --> 00:25:59.089
We picked those four topic areas based on feedback from the fire engineering community, organized ourselves in those four topic areas and solicited partners to join the initiative, and now we have more than 40 industry and research and academic partners that are part of the initiative all over the world and each of those entities, organizations, has representatives that serve, and each of the four topic areas has its own working group.

00:25:59.089 --> 00:26:05.667
We published a white paper in each of those topic areas with the contributions of all the working group members in 2023.

00:26:05.667 --> 00:26:11.508
And then we have been working since then to fund priority projects out of that.

00:26:11.508 --> 00:26:27.805
And then we actually you know earlier you asked me about revenue sources We've started to host in-person events, gci summits on particular topics that have been identified as areas of need by members of the working group.

00:26:27.805 --> 00:26:28.787
So it's really a collaborative.

00:26:28.787 --> 00:26:31.243
We're hosting it as the foundation, as the SFPE Foundation.

00:26:31.243 --> 00:26:37.364
We provide the platform, the staff support to move it forward, but all of the partners contribute in different ways.

00:26:37.954 --> 00:26:41.405
Academic partners contribute, you know, in-kind research, expertise, knowledge.

00:26:41.914 --> 00:26:45.986
Industry partners can contribute funding that goes towards supporting research projects and so on.

00:26:45.986 --> 00:27:02.414
And so, a good example being, we funded in the last year, through the foundation and from some of those resources that we were able to raise through that initiative, we funded projects on the digital interface between, or the interface between, digital buildings and fire service operations.

00:27:02.414 --> 00:27:04.577
That's a project that Lund University is working on.

00:27:04.577 --> 00:27:12.262
Now we funded one that's on the health and environmental impacts of large scale battery energy storage system fires.

00:27:12.262 --> 00:27:22.337
That's led by Dr Jamie McAllister Halliwell Fire Research Group, and then we have another project on fire testing of sustainable materials.

00:27:22.337 --> 00:27:23.923
That one's being led by Stellan Bosch.

00:27:23.923 --> 00:27:25.381
So we have a number of projects.

00:27:25.381 --> 00:27:41.301
Our latest one, the one that we funded most recently, is on energy storage system hazards, led by Zag and Fire and Risk Alliance out of the US, and so all these projects have been identified as top priorities by the GCI partner organizations and so moving those forward.

00:27:41.301 --> 00:27:45.901
So it's not just the sort of white papers that sit on the internet, right, we want to actually solve things.

00:27:46.174 --> 00:27:48.861
I always wanted to understand, gain clarity on the structure.

00:27:48.861 --> 00:27:53.002
So, basically, you've identified four fields where those challenges lie.

00:27:53.002 --> 00:28:20.163
You have identified a leader in each of those groups to start with, and around the leader it was built some sort of like a group of people, a panel of people then, that then work together to further go, uh, in ways they find suitable, I assume, through white papers, collaborations, papers, projects, uh, and basically that goes deeper as like on its own, kind of like like independently of you.

00:28:20.163 --> 00:28:29.247
So so it's not just one project to write a white paper, it's more like creating a platform that will work on this part, okay.

00:28:29.488 --> 00:28:32.964
Exactly, it's a shared platform and a shared space for collaboration, right?

00:28:32.964 --> 00:28:46.181
If you think of the foundation, you know we can kind of serve this unique sort of neutral third party role that kind of bridges that space between industry and academia and lets people collaborate from all over based on their interests and skill sets, right?

00:28:46.181 --> 00:28:51.324
So, like when a company joins or when an academic partner joins, they don't have to participate in all four areas.

00:28:51.324 --> 00:28:59.239
They could say hey, our research group really focuses on building, information modeling or built environment systems or smart buildings or something like that.

00:28:59.239 --> 00:29:05.483
We really just want to participate in the digitalization AI and cyber group, and so they'll send folks to participate in that.

00:29:05.483 --> 00:29:08.971
We really just want to participate in the digitalization AI and cyber group, and so they'll send folks to participate in that.

00:29:08.990 --> 00:29:10.374
And those conversations are what drives things.

00:29:10.374 --> 00:29:13.525
So, for example, what's happening right now in the working groups?

00:29:13.525 --> 00:29:14.934
We have those white papers as the sort of high level roadmap, right?

00:29:14.934 --> 00:29:38.645
Think of those as, like, where we see the gaps and the needs at a high level and then within the working groups, now we're really drilling down to okay, we know where the gaps are, but which of these gaps can we actually turn into a sort of 10-year trajectory, a series of research or educational endeavors that's going to get us to where we need to be right, Building each year, project after project, on the next right.

00:29:38.645 --> 00:29:42.701
If we want to be here in 10 years, let's work backwards and think what do we need to do today?

00:29:42.701 --> 00:29:59.018
And so those working groups now are actually developing RFPs that we expect to seek funding for and look for researchers to participate in on topics that are deemed most important, where we could have the biggest impact on the field and therefore on the community globally.

00:29:59.578 --> 00:30:03.807
And what were the fellowships within the within the ground challenges?

00:30:03.807 --> 00:30:04.609
How does this work?

00:30:04.630 --> 00:30:05.151
Yeah.

00:30:05.151 --> 00:30:12.903
So when we first launched the initiative, we said you know we want, we know we want to have a working group in each of these four topic areas and we want these working groups to produce a white paper.

00:30:12.903 --> 00:30:16.721
But volunteers we have an incredible community of volunteers, right.

00:30:16.721 --> 00:30:22.529
But as you know, you're a volunteer yourself in many different aspects of the work that SFB does, right.

00:30:22.529 --> 00:30:36.000
It takes a lot of time and energy and sometimes it can be useful to have one person who's sort of got their time dedicated to something, and it's easier to contribute as a volunteer when there's someone else who's sort of driving the bus, so to speak, right.

00:30:36.000 --> 00:30:41.785
So we created this GCI student fellowship program at the beginning.

00:30:41.785 --> 00:30:57.932
So there'd be a GCI fellow who would be an advanced graduate student or postdoc that would be assigned to each of the four working groups with the idea that this is someone that will receive a fellowship from us that's going to support their time spent on this project and really developing that white paper.

00:30:57.932 --> 00:31:05.140
So we actually had four GCI fellows that we did a competitive application process for that invited people to apply from all over the world in the topic that was suited.

00:31:05.140 --> 00:31:13.205
So we had people who were already, you know deep in their either PhD theses or postdoc research in this area, supporting each area.

00:31:13.205 --> 00:31:19.769
So we had those fellowships 2024 to 2025 timeframe.

00:31:20.290 --> 00:31:26.836
We partnered with Jensen Hughes to fund a new applied research fellowship program.

00:31:26.856 --> 00:31:41.305
That's part of the GCI, where we match a student with, in this case, the industry host partner to basically have them be able to benefit from getting to do the research that they're already interested in in an applied setting and working with an industry mentor.

00:31:41.586 --> 00:31:55.948
And so the first student to come out of that program was Amy Metz, who's at Oregon State University and just wrapped up her project, did a webinar on that, an open access webinar on that through the foundation, looking at VOC contamination in water distribution systems following wildfires.

00:31:55.948 --> 00:32:01.017
So that was that project and we expect to do another round of applied research fellowship programs next year.

00:32:01.017 --> 00:32:06.667
But again, that came out of GCI partners saying you know, we really need to bridge this industry research gap.

00:32:06.667 --> 00:32:14.324
How do we get folks who are doing this research, you know, helping us on these problems that our clients are coming to us with, you know, as consultants on a daily basis?

00:32:14.324 --> 00:32:15.775
How do we really connect those things?

00:32:15.775 --> 00:32:32.878
And so we looked at doing this sort of applied research program to benefit sort of, you know, both the students getting an opportunity to have their work sort of play out in the real world in real time and be part of that and see what that looks like, at the same time as the company is getting to build connections with the you know, that academic-based community.

00:32:33.280 --> 00:32:39.057
Okay, you said it's a 10-year-long initiative, so those leaders will rotate, or?

00:32:39.118 --> 00:32:39.318
Yes.

00:32:39.839 --> 00:32:40.080
Okay.

00:32:40.280 --> 00:32:46.020
Yeah, so right now in the working groups, after we published the white papers, we sort of did a refresh.

00:32:46.020 --> 00:32:58.164
So you think about the first sort of three years of the program had a chair and a GCI fellow assigned to each working group and all the working groups had between 20 and 30, in some cases up to 35 volunteers in each working group.

00:32:58.164 --> 00:33:19.945
Now we've sort of refreshed those working groups and this year have a co-chair, so two people leading up each of the working groups, and I believe two of the original four GCI fellows have now stayed around as co-chairs for their groups because they're in different sort of places in their careers now, and then we have a new leadership in those other roles.

00:33:19.945 --> 00:33:32.292
And then we have a new leadership in those other roles and in some cases we've had the chair from the original group stay but be joined by a new co-chair to sort of refresh that group, and so we'll have those opportunities for leadership turnover in the future as well.

00:33:32.772 --> 00:33:50.269
And if someone I'm not talking about a sponsor, but if someone would like to participate let's say there's someone who just graduated and they would like to be involved in, let's say, ai Is there a possibility for those people to eventually step into those groups and participate in that?

00:33:50.269 --> 00:33:52.090
Or is there a rare recruitment?

00:33:52.090 --> 00:33:52.951
How does it look like?

00:33:53.335 --> 00:33:54.577
So we have a few different options.

00:33:55.980 --> 00:34:07.809
Ideally, the way the model works is that the companies primarily for-profit companies, but in some cases not-for-profits that do make contributions industry essentially subsidizes the participation of academics, right?

00:34:07.894 --> 00:34:17.530
So we ask for donations from the corporate partners to support the work of the initiative, but we do not ask for any financial contribution from the academic partners.

00:34:17.530 --> 00:34:23.246
There's many reasons for that, but we know it opens up the door to be able to collaborate in different ways with academic institutions.

00:34:23.246 --> 00:34:31.829
And so at this time, ideally, if someone wanted to join, if they're part of a company, we would say let's reach out to me, let's set up a meeting.

00:34:31.829 --> 00:34:36.646
Maybe we can talk to your leadership in your company about why it would be a good idea to join, how it may benefit.

00:34:36.646 --> 00:34:51.168
I should say the GCI is specifically designed to be really directed, right, so it lets companies participate in a charitable effort, but where the work is all directed so it can be really mission aligned, you can line it up with the things that your company cares about.

00:34:51.168 --> 00:34:54.231
So that's make the difference from a pure philanthropic gift.

00:34:54.231 --> 00:35:03.891
But OK, so great if a company can join and then any number of their employees can participate in any number of the groups.

00:35:03.972 --> 00:35:04.574
That's one way.

00:35:04.574 --> 00:35:11.900
If you belong to, and if you reach out to me and you said I'm a assistant professor at this university, I'd like to participate, then I would say to you would it be possible, you know, for your department to join?

00:35:11.900 --> 00:35:21.829
It's no cost, but that would let other people in your department also participate and we'd put your department's logo on the page and it creates, you know, a stronger connection to your university.

00:35:21.829 --> 00:35:23.755
And so that's one option.

00:35:23.755 --> 00:35:33.755
If neither of those is an option, you're an independent researcher or you're part of a company that's not going to join but you want to participate, we also have other ways to volunteer.

00:35:33.755 --> 00:35:37.523
So we have external advisory panels for projects.

00:35:37.523 --> 00:35:47.264
So whenever we fund a major research project, we have between three and five subject matter experts on an external advisory panel provide oversight, so you could volunteer to serve on one of those.

00:35:47.264 --> 00:35:54.786
And then there's like a form that you fill out, submit your CV, basically, so we can make sure you're an expert on the thing that you're going to provide input on.

00:35:54.786 --> 00:35:56.155
So that's one way to volunteer.

00:35:56.155 --> 00:36:05.621
Another way would be, as we have more in-person events, program committee volunteers are really helpful, as you know, can be a lot to review, abstracts to review.

00:36:05.661 --> 00:36:12.856
You know, we have a few other things we're working on in terms of ways that people can support events, particularly so an individual could always volunteer.

00:36:12.856 --> 00:36:19.028
So, for example, next year we're hosting the first in-person WUI fire engineering summit.

00:36:19.028 --> 00:36:30.320
That'll be a technical conference focused on fire engineering applications in wildland urban interface fires and for that we have a really expansive program committee If you go to the website for that event.

00:36:30.320 --> 00:36:42.177
But that's because we want to have people on there from industry, from academia, from government agencies, because they all bring different perspectives to that problem and so there's a lot of different ways people can give back and volunteer their time there.

00:36:42.177 --> 00:36:43.422
Let's say separately.

00:36:43.422 --> 00:36:50.465
We have a separate WUI working group, so if someone is particularly interested in wildland urban interface fires, you could volunteer to be part of that group.

00:36:51.034 --> 00:36:55.130
The links are, of course, in the show notes, but you know that already, dear listener.

00:36:55.130 --> 00:36:58.780
You also had an AI summit this year in Berkeley.

00:36:58.780 --> 00:37:03.548
My Jakub was there and from what he told me, it was an amazing event.

00:37:03.548 --> 00:37:05.702
Congratulations on organizing that.

00:37:05.702 --> 00:37:06.505
So that's great.

00:37:06.505 --> 00:37:08.422
How about the outcomes of that?

00:37:08.422 --> 00:37:13.623
So, okay, a lot of work is done, a lot of knowledge is created in those working groups.

00:37:13.623 --> 00:37:16.644
They work out some very useful things.

00:37:16.644 --> 00:37:19.514
How are those things shared with the public?

00:37:19.514 --> 00:37:21.849
Do you have some sort of open access policy?

00:37:21.849 --> 00:37:25.983
What's the foundation take on releasing the findings of those projects?

00:37:26.282 --> 00:37:27.485
Yeah, that's a great point.

00:37:27.485 --> 00:37:36.268
So for all of our projects we try both to publish some sort of written report, some written takeaways, depending on the nature of the project, and that's for free, right?

00:37:36.268 --> 00:37:39.001
You can download those from our website.

00:37:39.001 --> 00:37:41.990
There's an open library where you can download those directly.

00:37:41.990 --> 00:37:43.235
There's no cost to doing so.

00:37:43.235 --> 00:37:47.887
We also, for all of our major research projects, always have an open access webinar.

00:37:47.887 --> 00:37:57.646
So major research projects being ones that are about 30,000 or more, where they typically have professional research teams on them, those projects we always do an open access webinar.

00:37:58.034 --> 00:38:02.657
Speaking to the AI Summit in particular so that was our first time doing an in-person event.

00:38:02.657 --> 00:38:30.568
We partnered with University of California Berkeley a fire research open access or three webinars on AI and fire engineering topics as sort of precursors to the summit, to get people engaged and on the same page.

00:38:30.568 --> 00:38:36.342
But those two webinars are still available on demand, so anybody can access those.

00:38:36.342 --> 00:38:38.081
One of them was done by Jonathan Hodges.

00:38:38.081 --> 00:38:45.039
It's an introduction to AI methods specifically for fire engineers, so encourage folks to check that out.

00:38:45.039 --> 00:38:46.744
We also have a second one on there.

00:38:46.744 --> 00:38:51.780
That's a panel discussion on issues of ethics and AI applications for fire engineers.

00:38:51.780 --> 00:38:53.505
So both of those are open access.

00:38:53.505 --> 00:38:58.023
Even if you were not there at the summit, you can still view those on demand.

00:38:58.023 --> 00:39:00.648
We also published after the fact.

00:39:00.648 --> 00:39:15.222
We held a webinar we actually did the same webinar twice to be able to capture different time zones, make it easier for people to join live from different parts of the world where we did a recap of the presentations, key takeaways and things that came up in the discussion, so you can also access that webinar.

00:39:15.222 --> 00:39:17.735
It's a post-summit webinar that anyone can view.

00:39:18.275 --> 00:39:34.190
And then, finally, I would say, perhaps most importantly, when we host these GCI summits as the foundation, any sort of net revenue from those events we're committed to funding and supporting research projects and other initiatives related to the topic of that event.

00:39:34.190 --> 00:39:38.842
So, functionally, the AI Summit, the AI and Fire Engineering Summit, was a fundraiser.

00:39:38.842 --> 00:39:47.469
So at the end of the day, after expenses, we raised about $30,000 to put towards an AI Summit or an AI and Fire Engineering project.

00:39:47.469 --> 00:39:59.831
And during the summit, we held a workshop at the end where we asked participants to tell us, based on what you've heard in the last two days, what do you think is most important, what should we prioritize, where should we allocate this funding?

00:40:00.293 --> 00:40:07.737
Collected all that data, all that feedback, and then we formed an AI task group within the Digitalization, ai and Cybersecurity Working Group.

00:40:07.737 --> 00:40:21.867
That AI task group is looking at all that feedback, looking at the 10-year plan from the white paper and working on narrowing down a project that we can fund with that money, with that sort of fundraising effort that will contribute to that trajectory of where we want to be in the next 10 years.

00:40:21.867 --> 00:40:25.697
So I think when we think about these summits, we're really thinking about them as hands-on.

00:40:25.697 --> 00:40:37.940
You don't just come and present which is a great thing to do, because there's lots of educational benefits to presenting and networking at these events but also by being there, you can help us decide what we're going to fund next in this topic area.

00:40:37.940 --> 00:40:43.257
So that's a big differentiator and something that we're excited to be part of.

00:40:43.496 --> 00:40:45.601
I mean, this kind of makes sense.

00:40:45.601 --> 00:40:51.347
It's an interesting scheme that you use, like first some fundraising to start projects.

00:40:51.347 --> 00:40:53.452
Those projects yield some outcomes.

00:40:53.452 --> 00:41:14.204
Those outcomes are valuable to people up to a point where they are happy to pay for an in-person event, for example, to be a part of, and this kind of attracts sponsorships, other opportunities to gain more funds, and eventually you have another source of income that you spend on another good project.

00:41:14.204 --> 00:41:23.039
So I think it's an interesting model of operations that you are developing and, yeah, that sounds really good.

00:41:23.289 --> 00:41:31.539
I wonder, like if I ask you what's the best way someone can spend money on research, the first answer would be to support the foundation, of course.

00:41:31.539 --> 00:41:50.380
But I would also like to ask you, like from your experience running this, how you decide what are the efficient ways of, or what have you learned as a leader of this organization on how to efficiently spend money on doing good things in fire science, because it's not an easy thing if you think about it.

00:41:50.380 --> 00:41:56.278
How to spend money well that you get the most out of a dollar spent there.

00:41:56.278 --> 00:41:59.927
Any advice you could give to the?

00:41:59.987 --> 00:42:02.795
other foundations out there that may be competing with you.

00:42:02.795 --> 00:42:05.476
I mean, come on, we're building a better world together.

00:42:05.990 --> 00:42:07.596
Yeah, I don't like to think of it as competing.

00:42:07.596 --> 00:42:08.418
Everyone always comes.

00:42:08.418 --> 00:42:12.260
They always tell us you know it's your competitors out there and I'm like you know.

00:42:12.469 --> 00:42:23.204
The truth is we often collaborate with them because we're all small foundations, so we'll often team up to either, like we've jointly funded projects, for example, with NFPA's Research Foundation, with the FPRF.

00:42:23.204 --> 00:42:31.059
We've jointly funded a couple of projects over the years and teamed up, because the reality is research is expensive to do in most cases.

00:42:31.059 --> 00:42:40.916
In many cases, whether we're talking about funding a postdoc or funding a PhD student or the specific materials or things that you would need to do, testing or whatever else, it is Research is expensive.

00:42:40.916 --> 00:42:42.440
We're a small foundation.

00:42:43.110 --> 00:42:44.215
In a world of big needs.

00:42:44.851 --> 00:42:46.114
In a world of big needs, right.

00:42:46.114 --> 00:42:59.175
And so this is really what's behind the GCI too is to say, you know, if everybody comes together and gives a little bit, then we have a bigger pool to work with, then we can have a bigger impact collectively than any of us can do by ourselves.

00:42:59.175 --> 00:43:16.349
And then also, if we're all sort of in our own silos, making incremental change, you know, we don't want to duplicate what other people are doing, right, it's to me, it's a waste of money if the foundation ends up allocating funds to do something that's already been done by 10 other people in the last two years.

00:43:16.349 --> 00:43:20.197
Right, that's not a good use or an effective or an efficient use of our funds.

00:43:20.197 --> 00:43:32.786
So it's better if we can be, you know, collaborative and trying to find where are those places that we can, given the resources we have, we can make the most difference, right, and sometimes that looks like a $5,000 student research grant.

00:43:32.786 --> 00:43:36.034
Sometimes that looks like a $30,000 or $40,000 grant.

00:43:36.034 --> 00:43:44.802
Sometimes it's a bigger initiative where we go after funding from other institutions to be able to support a larger project with multiple collaborators.

00:43:44.802 --> 00:43:46.853
That takes a couple of years or so.

00:43:47.295 --> 00:43:55.663
But I would say for us, we're constantly thinking about how can we add to or build on or go into areas where other people aren't but where we know we need to be?

00:43:55.663 --> 00:43:58.114
So when we're making decisions, that's what we're thinking about.

00:43:58.114 --> 00:44:02.193
If we're looking at something, we say, look, there's already a lot of people doing work on this topic.

00:44:02.193 --> 00:44:08.295
Maybe that's not the best space for us, unless we think we can add something specific and incremental that will make a difference.

00:44:08.295 --> 00:44:14.731
Maybe it's better for us to be the first or one of the first funders in this other space that's emerging right.

00:44:14.751 --> 00:44:33.382
That's why we always come back to these like emerging topics and technologies, because I think we, we think, given that we're relatively small, that we can make a bigger difference in some of those areas that are sort of less explored, less tapped, where there's not available funding, where there aren't large funding organizations already making available lots of funds, and that could be on a, on a topic.

00:44:33.382 --> 00:44:35.083
It could also be geographic, right.

00:44:35.083 --> 00:44:43.811
It could be that there are parts of the world where people really don't have as much access to certain kinds of funds, and perhaps we can fill in some of those gaps there.

00:44:43.811 --> 00:44:59.963
So that's, I guess, how I would say and I say we in all these cases, but we, you know, being the foundation as a whole right, our board of governors is really committed to those ideals and I think it really shows up and how we're always trying to improve on our processes and impact.

00:45:00.730 --> 00:45:04.039
What's more important, a perfect person or a perfect topic to research?

00:45:04.039 --> 00:45:05.996
What do you mean by?

00:45:06.016 --> 00:45:06.759
a perfect person.

00:45:07.250 --> 00:45:37.599
If you have like, if you find somewhere a really like interesting scientist who's really passionate about a topic that's perhaps not very interesting, like you know, I'm thinking about someone who's trying to burn 25 chairs or maybe you have, like a topic like lithium ion batteries which, like bazillion people in the world are researching altogether, because it's a hundred billion dollar industry, you know, and you have your 5,000 bucks to spend.

00:45:37.599 --> 00:45:40.516
Like it's a tough decision where to go.

00:45:40.577 --> 00:45:47.661
Yes, so actually, I think the answer to that is we're always looking at potential impact.

00:45:47.661 --> 00:46:00.273
So, if the study goes as planned and we find out the things from the study that we expect the questions get answered that we hope to answer what's the potential knock-on effect of that, what's the potential impact of that?

00:46:00.273 --> 00:46:13.059
And that's what leads us to give $5,000 to someone who wants to burn 25 chairs in the same conditions, right, because it turns out, if the answer to that is they don't burn the same, that's a big deal, right, and so in that case it is the topic.

00:46:13.059 --> 00:46:21.871
It might seem like bizarre, but it's the potential impact of you know the answers to those questions, right?

00:46:21.871 --> 00:46:29.360
And I think that fundamentally is it Because the same thing, if you think about to your point, there's so much money going into research on lithium ion batteries, right?

00:46:29.360 --> 00:46:37.798
So much money If there's a project that needs to be done in that space, probably at this point in the development there's better partners.

00:46:37.898 --> 00:47:02.909

219 - Giving back with the SFPE Foundation - with Leslie Marshall

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