Dr. Albert Simeoni

Wildfires as a Multiscale, Mutliphysics Problem

(Monday, March 16)

Dr. Albert Simeoni is Department Head and Professor in the Department of Fire Protection Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Before joining WPI, he held academic positions in the UK (the University of Edinburgh) and in France (the University of Corsica). In addition, he has spent over 10 years working as a volunteer firefighter in France. His research is geared towards developing experimental, analytical, and numerical techniques to better understand fire dynamics and to predict fire and wildland fire behavior, as well as their impact on people and structures, inside buildings, in the wildlands, and at the wildland-urban interface.

Dr. Roger Barker

Revolutionary Advances in Evaluating the Performance of Firefighter Protective Gear in Full-Scale Fire Tests

(Tuesday, March 17)

Dr. Roger Barker is the Burlington Distinguished Professor in the Department of Textile Engineering, Chemistry and Science at Wilson College Textiles at North Carolina State University. He is a past member of the National Academy of Science, Institute of Medicine Standing Committee on Personal Protective Technologies and was a national finalist for the Christopher Columbus Award for research related to Homeland Security. He received the Alexander Quarles Holladay Medal of Excellence, the highest award given to a faculty member by NC State University. He holds BS and MS degrees in physics from the University of Tennessee and a PhD in Textile and Polymer Science from Clemson University.

Dr. Barker is the founding Director of North Carolina State University’s Center for Research on Textile Protection and Comfort (TPACC), a recognized world leader in the specialized area of protective materials and the comfort of textiles. He has engaged in numerous research projects that have improved the safety of people through scientific achievements in their protective materials and protective clothing systems. His leadership led to the development and application of unique systems-level testing technologies, such as the Pyroman™ Fire Test System.

He received the Bruce W. Teele Award for Excellence in service to firefighters. He recently received the inaugural 2026 Roger L. Barker Award for Excellence in the field of protective clothing, and ASTM Committee F23 standards for protective clothing, established by the American Society of Testing and Materials(ASTM) International.

Dr. Brian Bojko

Irv Glassman Young Investigator

Bridging the Gap Between Small-Scale and System-Level Combustion Simulations

(Wednesday, March 18)

Dr. Brian Bojko earned his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the University at Buffalo in 2017, where his graduate research focused on modeling multi-phase reactive spray flames using flamelet progress-variable methods to capture the effects of detailed chemistry during gas-phase combustion and particle burning in turbulent flames. After graduating, he spent four years at the Naval Air Warfare Center, Weapons Division (NAWCWD) in China Lake, CA. There, he conducted research on gun propellant combustion, heterogeneous solid-rocket propellants, and began leading projects investigating combustion events in air-breathing propulsion systems.

Dr. Bojko is currently a lead scientist in the Laboratories for Computational Physics & Fluid Dynamics at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC. There, he is the PI on multiple research projects on the detailed combustion of solid polymeric fuels, investigating group combustion effects in dense metal flames, high-speed air-breathing propulsion, and the development of numerical methods to model complex environments. Dr. Bojko serves on the JANNAF Air-Breathing Propulsion (APS) Technical Committee as the co-chair of the Ramjet Propulsion Mission Area and as a committee member of the Propellants and Combustion Technical Committee for AIAA. His roles aim to advance technical understanding of fundamental processes and their relation to real-world applications.

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