Affiliated Faculty & Researchers
Dr. Amanda M. Stasiewicz
Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, University of Oregon
Dr. Amanda Stasiewicz is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at University of Oregon; her research specializes in the human dimensions of wildfire including community adaptation to wildfire risks, conflict and collaboration around wildfire adaptation and management, and local and agency responses to wildfire events. Dr. Stasiewicz’s research efforts particularly focus on citizen-agency conflict and cooperation during wildfire preparation/prevention and during wildfire response (e.g., suppression, evacuation) and the pathways different communities living in fire-prone environments take to address their unique wildfire risk circumstances. Stasiewicz has been a collaborator on multiple NSF-funded projects integrating model outputs, virtualizations, and social science techniques to inform practical wildfire management strategies for diverse populations and circumstances in the US.
Dr. Ali Tohidi
Assistant Professor of Fire Protection Engineering, University of Maryland | Principal Investigator, Thermo-Fluids compleXity Laboratory
Dr. Ali Tohidi is a fluid dynamicist and a data scientist. His research and development interests are at the nexus of experimental, data-driven, and mathematical modeling of large-scale complex systems, particularly the phenomena revolving around fluid and fire dynamics. He received his M.Sc. from Sharif University of Technology where he showed the effects of wind-induced surface cooling on transport processes in aquatic canopies. He, also, received his Ph.D. in Civil & Environmental Engineering from Clemson University, where he studied wildfire spread via firebrand shower phenomenon. Later, he held a Postdoctoral Scholar position in Fire Protection Engineering Department at the University of Maryland, College Park where he worked on the combustion-induced thermo-mechanical failure of cellular solids as well as dynamics of fire whirls; an extreme fire behavior. His current efforts are focused on developing the new generation of operational wildfire behavior models and characterization of the near-term risk for grid resiliency.
Contact: ali.tohidi@sjsu.edu
Dr. Mario Miguel Valero Pérez
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
Dr. Valero is an expert in wildfire remote sensing. In the last years he has developed a suite of novel image processing tools for automating the aerial monitoring of active wildfires. Dr. Valero has extensive experience in fire behavior measurement and simulation, with additional expertise in Earth observation, data-driven modeling, machine learning, computational fluid dynamics, cloud computing, high-performance computing and uncertainty quantification. Committed to solving current societal challenges, he works closely with industry partners to ensure that his research is products are transferred to society.
Dr. Patrick Brown
Co-Director of the Climate and Energy Team at The Breakthrough Institute
Patrick T. Brown is a Co-Director of the Climate and Energy Team at The Breakthrough Institute and is also an adjunct faculty member (lecturer) in the Energy Policy and Climate Program at Johns Hopkins University. He was a founding member of WIRC as an assistant professor in the Department of Meteorology & Climate Science at San Jose State University where he taught and conducted research on weather and climate and their interactions with society. A primary research focus of his is the climatic influence on wildfire activity - through changes in winds and aridity.
Dr. Jan Mandel
Professor of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences at University of Colorado, Denver