Research Expertise and Interest

combustion, fire dynamics, wildland fire, fluid mechanics

Research Description

Dr. Michael Gollner received his B.S. (2008), M.S. (2010) and Ph.D. (2012) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, San Diego. He was a faculty member in the Department of Fire Protection Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park from 2012-2019. He is broadly interested in fire science problems, utilizing experiments and combustion and fluid dynamics theory to solve problems related to fire spread, material flammability, and smoke transport. Much of his work is focused on applications to wildfires, including their spread through vegetation, ignition of structures in the wildland-urban interface (WUI), transport of embers, fire whirls, and emissions from wildfire smoke.

Dr. Gollner is active in professional society leadership, previously serving as Treasurer and a member of the Board of Directors for the International Association of Wildland Fire (IAWF), Chair of the Research Advisory Board of the National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA) Fire Protection Research Foundation, and as a member of the Management Committee of the International Association for Fire Safety Science. He currently serves as a board member and Secretary of the Western States Section of the Combustion Institute, Associate Editor for the journal Fire Technology and serves on the boards of the Fire Safety Journal and the International Journal of Wildland Fire. He is a principal member of the NFPA Technical Committees on Spaceports and Wildland and Rural Fire Protection. He is also a recipient of the Combustion Institute Tsuji Early Career Research Award, NSF CAREER award, Proulx Early Career Award in Fire Safety Science, and the Fire Protection Research Foundation Medal.