Scientific Committee ISTSS

Ying Zhen Li (Chair), RISE Research Institutes of Sweden

Dr Ying Zhen Li is a senior research scientist at RISE since 2010 and also an associate Professor (Docent) affiliated to Luleå University of Technology since 2021. He chairs the ISTSS Scientific Committee. He also serves as associate editor of Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology, guest editor of Fire Safety Journal, and editorial board member of Underground Space. He has published more than 100 scientific/technical publications concerning tunnel fire safety, co-authored the book “Tunnel Fire Dynamics” (1st version 2015, 2nd version 2024), and has been the winner of several prestigious awards, such as the “SFPE Jack Bono Award” and “ITA COSUF Award”. He has been Stanford/Elsevier's Top 2% Scientist since 2019.

Anders Lönnermark,  RISE Research Institutes of Sweden

Dr Anders Lönnermark is a senior research scientist at the Department of Safety at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, where he has been employed since 1995. Since 2019 he is the director of the Fire Protection unit at RISE. He is the chair of the ISTSS Organizing Committee. He has a long experience of performing fire tests, both in model-scale and in full scale. In 2003 he was responsible for the performance of the large-scale tests in the Runehamar tunnel. In 2005 he got his PhD degree from Lund University and the title of the thesis was “On the Characteristics of Fires in Tunnels”. He is co-author of the book “Tunnel Fire Dynamics”. He was an adjunct professor at Mälardalen University 2013-2019.

Haukur Ingason, RISE Research Institutes of Sweden

Prof Haukur Ingason has over thirty years of international experience in fire safety research and engineering. He has been involved in large scale and model scale studies of fire and smoke spread in tunnels since 1992 and is one of the authors to the Tunnel Fire Dynamics handbook. He is an adjunct  professor at Lund University, where he is supervising and giving classes for students on fire dynamics in tunnels and a senior research scientist at RISE Safety – Fire Research in Borås Sweden since 1988.

Ricky Carvel, University of Edinburgh, UK

Dr Ricky Carvel is Assistant Director of Learning and Teaching and Senior Lecturer in Fire Dynamics in the School of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He has previously worked for the University of Aberystwyth, Heriot-Watt University, and International Fire Investigators and Consultants. He is editor of the ‘Handbook of Tunnel Fire Safety’ (3rd Edition in pre-planning) and was associate editor of Fire Safety Journal (2009-2015). He has been working in the field of fire science and engineering for over 25 years, focusing on the interaction between fires, ventilation and water sprays in both tunnels and buildings, but also dust explosions, material flammability, fire investigation, etc. In 2018 he was awarded the ISTSS Achievement Award. He has authored more than 20 journal papers and 40 conference papers. 

Håkan Frantzich, Lund University, Sweden

Dr Håkan Frantzich is a senior lecturer at Lund University in Sweden. His main area of expertise is related to people safety during evacuation in fires. He has a great experience in performing evacuation experiments for research purposes and linking fire human behaviour and movement of people to evacuation modelling. He is also involved as a fire safety expert in building design. Frantzich has also been involved in the development of design procedures for linking risk assessment and fire safety design. He has contributed to the spread of fire related knowledge as an author of different publications e.g. design guides, building codes, a chapter on risk assessment methods in the next SFPE Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering and several journal and conference papers.

Rune Brandt, HBI Haerter, Switzerland

Dr Rune Brandt heads the renowned and internationally reputed consultancy HBI Haerter. Since 1963, the tunnel ventilation and the safety concept of than 600 tunnels world wide have been designed by HBI Haerter that has offices in Switzerland and Germany. Moreover, pollutions dispersion modelling and risk assessment is part of the core services. Dr Rune Brandt is active in PIARC’s tunnel working group “air quality, fires and ventilation”. Moreover, he serves on several scientific committees. HBI Haerter follows projects from first ideas over preliminary and detailed design to tendering, site supervision and operation. Dr Rune Brandt holds a Ph.D. from Cambridge University (UK), is Eur Ing and has a M.Sc. from the Technical university of Denmark.

Daniel Joyeux, Efectis, France

Dr Daniel Joyeux is the chairman of Efectis Group dedicated to fire safety testing, certification, and engineering with more than 300 employees and 6 fire laboratories. He is an active member of numerous standardization and pre-standardization groups, as NFPA 502 for fire safety of tunnel, AFCEN for fire safety in Nuclear Plant, but also working groups from French ministries for regulation evolution. He is the convenor of the CEN TC127 WG8 “Fire Safety Engineering”. After a PHD on soot formation in 1993, he is working since 30 years on the FSE development and fire safety improvement. For 5 years, he has been Fire Expert of Justice at the Paris court of appeal.

Gary English, CEO, Underground Command and Safety, USA 

Ret. Seattle USA Deputy Chief of Major Transportation Projects and Assistant Fire Marshal.    Extensive experience new and retrofits of road and rail tunnel projects (SR99 2019, Sound Transit Rail 2004-2017, Interstate 90 tunnels, conversion road tunnel to rail, et.al).  Enforcing and interpreting tunnel regulations, review of design/application of fire and life safety systems, installation, and commissioning.  Development of emergency response plans, conduct emergency responder training in underground fires, terrorism, multiple casualty incidents with numerous related papers.  Technical committee member on NFPA Road and Rail tunnels, Transportation Research Board Underground/Tunnel Structures, PIARC Road Tunnels, Projects for National Research Council (US and Canada), National Highway Cooperative Research Programs. 

Iain Bowman, Mott MacDonald, Canada

Dr Iain Bowman is a Deputy Practice Leader for fire-life safety with global consultants Mott MacDonald, and has a PhD from the University of Cambridge, with over thirty years of professional experience. He is registered as a Chartered Engineer with the Institute of Mechanical Engineers and as a Professional Engineer with Engineers and Geoscientists British Columbia. Following a decade in manufacturing, since 2002 he has been involved globally in underground infrastructure fire safety, focused on fire engineering, risk estimation, tunnel ventilation and tunnel fire safety systems. His experience spans road, rail and specialty tunnels, including diverse new-build tunnel projects as well as numerous rehabilitation projects for older tunnels. He currently serves on the Technical Committee for the NFPA 502 Standard and is a voting member on the Technical Committee for the AMCA 250 Standard. 

Peter Sturm, Graz University of Technology, Austria

Peter Sturm is professor at Graz University of Technology, Austria. He holds a PhD in mechanical engineering. The current position is dean of studies for the faculty of Mechanical Engineering, deputy head of the Institute and head of the section “traffic and environment” at the Institute for Internal Combustion Engines and Thermodynamics.
The focus of the research work is in the field of tunnel ventilation and safety as well as on urban air quality. He represents Austria in PIARC (world road association) technical committees for safety, ventilation and operation of road tunnels and NFPA 502 (USA). He has been involved in the design of ventilation systems of road and rail tunnels for more than 25 years.

Ove Njå, University of Stavanger, Norway

Ove Njå is professor of Risk and Emergency Management at the University of Stavanger (UiS) (2000-), working in the Centre of Risk Management and Societal Safety (SEROS). His professional career includes five years in the civil engineering industry, ten years in the petroleum industry and 20 years in research and education. Njå has participated in and led a large number of research projects, comprising risk analysis, risk acceptance, risk management, emergency preparedness and crisis management in which fire hazards in tunnels have been included. He is currently leading a research project on competence increase related to tunnel safety. Ove Njå has played a key role in the development of the educational programmes at master and Ph.D level in societal safety at the University of Stavanger.

Magnus Arvidson, RISE Research Institutes of Sweden

Magnus Arvidson is a Fire Protection Engineer graduated from the University of Lund in Sweden in 1989. He has been working at RISE Fire Research since 1991, mainly responsible for activities related to water mist and sprinkler system testing and research. He served as a member in the NFPA 750 technical committee on the installation of water mist fire protection systems from 1993 to 2000, has been active in the Sub Committee on Fire Protection at the International Maritime Organization, and has been involved in a technical committee at CEN developing a standard for water mist systems. He is currently a member of the Scientific Council of the International Water Mist Association.

Vladimir Molkov, Ulster University, UK

Professor Vladimir Molkov, MSc (Quantum Radiophysics), PhD (Chemical Physics), DSc (Fire and Explosion Safety), FHEA, CEng, FEI, Chartered Energy Engineer. Director of Hydrogen Safety Engineering and Research Centre (HySAFER) at Ulster University (Northern Ireland), one of the key providers of hydrogen safety research and education globally. Chair, Education Committee of International Association for Hydrogen Safety. Membership: UN GTR#13; ISO/TC197; CEN/CLC/JTC6; BSI PVE/3/8, IEA Task 43 Hydrogen Safety, European Hydrogen Safety Panel, etc. Coordination and contribution to 42 national and EU projects in hydrogen safety totalling external funding income £12M. 400+ publications, including the free download e-Book “Fundamentals of Hydrogen Safety Engineering”, and 15 inventions, including explosion-free in any fire self-venting (TPRD-less) Type IV tanks for hydrogen storage. 

Igor Maevski, Jacobs, USA 

Dr Maevski is a Jacobs Engineering Global Tunnel Fire and Life Safety Lead with 40 years of experience in tunnel ventilation and tunnel Fire and life safety systems design and analysis. He is a Licensed Professional Engineer in the US, ASHRAE Fellow; Chairman of ASHRAE Standard Committee 217 on “Non-Emergency Ventilation in Enclosed Road, Rail and Mass Transit Facilities”, Principal Member of NFPA 502 Technical Committee since 2004. He is the author of numerous papers and several publications on tunnel ventilation and fire life safety, including the TRB Synthesis Study - Design Fires in Road Tunnels, Recommended AASHTO Guidelines for Emergency Ventilation Smoke Control in Road Tunnels and the NFPA Fire Protection Handbook Chap. 10 Sect. 21 “Road Tunnels and Bridges", and contributor to ASHRAE Applications Handbook 2023.

Yajue Wu, Sheffield University, UK

Dr Wu is the director of the MSc on Process Safety and Loss Prevention at Sheffield University. She is an academic staff in Sheffield University and undertakes research and teaching on fires and explosion hazards and process safety. She has undertaken research on the dynamics of fires and explosions since 1988. Her PhD research at Sheffield University was on dynamics of vented explosions in offshore platforms. After PhD, she joined Edinburgh University as a post-doctoral research fellow. She worked at the Health and Safety Laboratory at Buxton on an intensive experimental investigation of tunnel fires, and also on the CFD study of the King’s Cross Underground Station fire in 1987. Her current research interests include fast fire spread phenomena in buildings and underground structures, tunnel fires, fire and explosion dynamics of hydrogen energy systems and lithium-ion batteries.

Silas Li , WSP, USA

Silas Li is leading the Tunnel Systems Group at WSP USA where he actively participated in various complex multi-discipline transportation projects involving advanced technologies that can improve tunnel ventilation and fire life safety. He has spent over 30 years in all phases of project delivery for tunnel systems and fire-life safety, and is particularly skilled in the application of Subway Environment Simulation (SES), CFD, Egress Modeling and Environmental Control System (ECS) design for transit, rail and road tunnel projects. He has worked on over 50 transportation projects in the U.S. and abroad, and is recognized as an international expert on tunnel ventilation and fire-life safety. He chaired the ventilation task group of NFPA 130 for over 10 years. He is one of the leading authors of the upgrades of SES. 

Daniel Nilsson, University of Canterbury, New Zealand

Professor Daniel Nilsson joined the department of Civil and Natural Resources Engineering (CNRE) at the University of Canterbury in August 2018. His main research interest is evacuation. Early research focused on the interaction between people and evacuation systems in buildings and tunnels, e.g., way-finding systems and fire alarms. In the last couple of years, Daniel has explored the use of Virtual Reality experiments, i.e., experiments performed in virtual environments instead of built physical environments. Since arriving in New Zealand in 2018, Daniel has expanded his research into the areas of wildfire and tsunami evacuation.

Benjamin Truchot, Ineris, France

Benjamin is a project manager in Ineris in the Fire, Dispersion, and Explosion department and is in charge of several research topics that are more specifically focused on fire and the influence of new energy carriers. Before this activity, he led the Ineris Fire Department for over 10 years. Benjamin has been involved in many research projects about tunnel safety, both experimental and numerical, for more than 15 years and has published many papers in that field. Benjamin is also involved in standardization as a member of TC92/SC3, chairman of SC3/WG6.

Gunnar Deinboll Jenssen, SINTEF, Norway

Dr. Jenssen, a Senior Research Scientist with a PhD in Roads and Transport and a master's in psychology, has over 25 years of experience in tunnel design, road safety, and road user behavior. At SINTEF, he led projects like the Rogfast subsea road tunnel and works on the underground in Singapore. He has implemented safety measures in some of the longest road tunnels in the world and serves as expert advisor on self rescue, wayfinding, emergency exit signs and systems for authorities in Norway, USA, China, Singapore and the EU. He co-authored a chapter on Autonomous Driving in "Technology Changes Society" (2017), and currently he is engaged in European projects on automated vehicle development, certification and trust. He lectures at several universities on tunnel safety. His work on the Lærdal Tunnel earned the Norwegian and Nordic Lighting Prizes.