NASA-funded project offers new insights into fire behavior in space

In the coming years, NASA plans to launch long-duration missions to the Moon and to Mars, where astronauts will spend weeks, months or even years living in spacecraft. Understanding fire behavior in these environments is important to ensuring crew safety, but flammability testing conducted on Earth does not always give a complete picture of how…

Read More

New model sheds light on how wildfires spread through communities

California has already recorded more than 6,000 wildfires this year, underscoring the need for better mitigation strategies to reduce their devastating impact. Now, researchers have created a model that may shed light on how these fires spread through communities in the wildland-urban interface (WUI), enabling us to better assess the risks of wildfire and take steps…

Read More

Why wildfires are at their deadliest in more than a century

Fire Research Group

Washington Post: Large wildfires are happening more often because the hazards that trigger them — dry conditions, strong winds, plenty of stuff to burn — are becoming more common, says Michael Gollner, associate professor of mechanical engineering, who heads Berkeley’s Fire Research Lab.

Read More

International Fire Safety Consortium Releases Free, Open Access Video Webinar Series on Wildland Fires in Partnership with UL’s Fire Safety Research Institute and UC Berkeley

The International Fire Safety Consortium (IFSC), a network co-led by the University of California, Berkeley that brings together leading higher-education institutions and fire safety research organizations from around the world, has announced the release of a new series of free, open access educational video webinars on wildland fires, in partnership with UL’s Fire Safety Research Institute…

Read More

UC wildfire symposium focuses on wildland-urban interface

UC scientists and researchers discussed fire in the wildland-urban interface, or WUI, at the second UC wildfire symposium Wednesday. UC President Michael Drake began by explaining what was discussed in the first wildfire symposium before touching on the WUI, where the built environment comes in contact with the natural lands. “Here in California, we are seeing firsthand…

Read More

Tracking and Fighting Fires on Earth and Beyond

Mechanical engineer Michael Gollner and his graduate student, Sriram Bharath Hariharan, from the University of California, Berkeley, recently traveled to NASA’s John H. Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. There, they dropped burning objects in a deep shaft and study how fire whirls form in microgravity. The Glenn Center hosts a Zero Gravity Research Facility,…

Read More

New California Fire Science Seminar Series

This new online seminar series will cover the breadth of wildland fire research relevant to California and introduce researchers to new topics and research groups across the state. Topics will include fire weather, wildfire risk, fire ecology, remote sensing, emissions, fire dynamics, fire modeling and public health. Featuring many early-career researchers, this series is aimed at…

Read More

New Faculty Spotlight: Michael Gollner

The Department of Mechanical Engineering would like to introduce you to one of our newest faculty members: Assistant Professor Michael Gollner.

Professor Gollner joined us here in Etcheverry Hall in the Spring of 2020. Click to learn more about Professor Gollner and his research into how fires spread, how emissions from fires are generated and how buildings ignite, with the goal of reducing their devastating effects in the future.

Read More

Meet Our New Faculty: Michael Gollner, Mechanical Engineering

Name: Michael Gollner Discipline: Mechanical engineering Degrees: B.S., 2008, M.S., 2010, and Ph.D., UC San Diego, 2012 Research interests: My work focuses on understanding the physical processes controlling wildfires and other complex thermal-fluid phenomena. We investigate how fires spread, how emissions from fires are generated and how buildings ignite, with the goal of reducing their devastating effects in the future. 

Read More

ME Assistant Professor Michael Gollner to Give Plenary Lecture on Wildland Fires

ME Assistant Professor Michael Gollner will be giving a Plenary Lecture on Wildland Fires at the 2020 Spring Meeting of the Western States Section of The Combustion Institute (WSSCI). This year, the meeting will be held on March 23-24 at Stanford University. The spring meetings bring together researchers, scientists and engineers from academia, national labs…

Read More