Composed of representatives from across the fire safety and engineering field, as well as partner organizations and related stakeholders, the 2025 AI in Fire Engineering Summit Program Committee has put together an impressive lineup of presenters to speak to a wide range of topics within our focus area of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Fire Engineering. The idea for this topic-focused event emerged out of the priorities identified by the SFPE Foundation’s Grand Challenges Initiative Digitalization, AI, & Cybersecurity (DAIC) working group in their white paper. They identified the need for an in-person conference focused on what AI is, how it is and will be applicable to fire engineering, and where we need to focus our resources to invest in strategic research and educational efforts to advance fire safety for all.
This 2025 AI in Fire Engineering Summit represents the first convening on this topic. We aim to highlight many examples from a broad range of areas of the applicability and relevance of AI for Fire Engineering. Based on participant feedback and GCI DAIC Working Group input, we expect to offer additional educational content in the future, with more time for deep dives on specific topics.
On behalf of the program committee, we hope you join us in Berkeley, California this May to help drive the future of AI in Fire Engineering!
Program Committee
(Chair, Program Committee) Amanda Kimball, NFPA Research Foundation
(Co-Chair) Leslie Marshall, SFPE Foundation
(Co-Chair) Michael Gollner, University of California, Berkeley
Ali Tohidi, University of Maryland
Ankit Sharma, Case Western Reserve University
Birgitte Messerschmidt, National Fire Protection Association
Brian Metzger, United States Fire Administration
Bryan Hoskins, Oklahoma State University
Charley Fleischmann, University of Canterbury
Christopher Wieczorek, FM
Corey Kinsman, Performance Based Fire Protection Engineering
David Icove, University of Tennessee
David Jacoby, Simpson Gumpertz & Heger
Elizabeth Weckman, University of Waterloo
Guillermo Rein, Imperial College
Islam Gomaa, National Research Council Canada
James Kribs, North Carolina A&T State University
Jim Milke, Fire & Risk Alliance, LLC
John Burge, Google Research
Jonathan Hodges, Jensen Hughes
Joshua Greene, Simpson Gumpertz & Heger
M. Hamed Mozaffari, National Research Council Canada
M.Z. Naser, Clemson University
Matthew Bonner, Trigon Fire
Matthias Ihme, Stanford University
Michael Pallett, Pallett Corner Consulting
Milosh Puchovsky, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Mohammadreza Eslami, Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center
Nalini Venkatasubramanian, University of California, Irvine
Nour Elsagan, National Research Council Canada
Qingsheng Samuel Wang, Texas A&M University
Ruggiero Lovreglio, Massey University
Ryan Falkenstein-Smith, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Stephen Johnston, Senez Consulting
*Tianhang Zhang, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Victoria Hutchison, NFPA Research Foundation
Wai Cheong Tam (Andy), National Institute of Standards and Technology
Will Higgins, Fisher Engineering, a BOWMAN company
Xinyan Huang, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
*Yoon Ko, National Research Council Canada
Yuhan Jiang, North Carolina A&T State University
*With special thanks to the Program Committee members who also led the development of the GCI Digitalization, AI, & Cybersecurity white paper that called for this convening: Yoon Ko, National Research Council Canada (Chair, GCI DAIC Working Group), and Tianhang Zhang, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Fellow, GCI DAIC Working Group).