With $2.5 million from the National Science Foundation, an interdisciplinary, multicampus University of California research team is partnering with agencies and community organizations in the Bay Area to help residents respond to natural disasters more quickly — and more safely. The 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85 people and laid waste to more than 240 …
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 …
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, …
Why ‘Fire is Normal’ in California and How Communities Can Change to Cut Risks
Michael Gollner, UC Berkeley Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering, joins Yahoo Finance to discuss the risks of wildfires on the West Coast and how residents can adjust to stay safe.
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 …
ME Assistant Professor Michael Gollner to Receive 2020 Hiroshi Tsuji Early Career Researcher Award
ME Assistant Professor Michael Gollner has been selected as a co-recipient of the 2020 Hiroshi Tsuji Early Career Researcher Award. The annual award, co-sponsored by Elsevier and The Combustion Institute, recognizes up to two early career researchers who have demonstrated excellence in fundamental or applied combustion science and have achieved a significant advancement in their …
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.
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.
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 …
What Are Fire Whirls? Researchers Examine the Behavior of These Tornado-Like Fire Columns
In a fire whirl, rising hot air twists flames into a towering pillar. Although fire whirls in wildlands are normally small, fire whirls can grow large and destructive, forming into a burning tornado, as in the case of the 2018 Carr fire in California. In this video, Assistant Professor Michael Gollner explains the characteristics of …