Biography

Prof. Samuel L. Manzello is currently visiting Professor at the Institute of Fluid Science (IFS) at Tohoku University and also with Reax Engineering. Over the span of his two decades career at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, part of the US Department of Commerce, Samuel’s expertise may be best described as bringing fundamental combustion knowledge to practical problems. His research in droplet-surface interaction was featured in the journal Nature and his firebrand research was featured in the journal Science. Samuel has received many awards including a NASA Graduate Student Researcher Fellowship (NASA-GSRP), a National Research Council Post-Doctoral Fellowship (NRC), a fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), a NIST Individual Bronze Medal, NIST Engineering Laboratory (EL) Awards for best paper and Outstanding Communicator, the 2015 Harry C. Biggelstone Award from NFPA, the 2016 Tibor Z. Harmathy Award from Springer Nature, the 2016 and 2020 Best Journal Paper Award from the Combustion Society of Japan, the 2024 Jack Bono Award from SFPE Foundation, and the 2017 Samuel Wesley Stratton Award as an individual from NIST, NIST’s highest award for fundamental research. Samuel’s research is published in more than 90 journal articles, across some 25 different journals focused on heat and mass transfer, combustion, and fluid dynamics. On March 2024, the firebrand generator he invented, known as the Dragon, was published as an international standard by ISO TC92, Fire Safety.

As a world renown expert in wildland-urban interface (WUI) fires, he was an invited speaker and panelist at The Chemistry of Urban Wildfires - A Virtual Information-Gathering Workshop hosted by National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine in 2021, the 11th International Association for Fire Safety Science Symposium in 2014, and the 9th Asia-Oceania Symposium on Fire Science and Technology Symposium in 2012. He has served as Guest Editor for Fire and Materials, Fire Technology, Fire Safety Journal, Combustion Science and Technology, Frontiers in Mechanical Engineering, and is currently Associate Editor of Fire Technology and Guest Editor for Applications in Energy and Combustion Science. Additional service includes colloquium co-chair for Fire Research at the 37th, 38th, and 39th International Combustion Symposium, convener of ISO TC92/WG14 (Large Outdoor Fires and the Built Environment), and co-leader of the IAFSS permanent working group LOF&BE (Large Outdoor Fires and the Built Environment). At the invitation of Springer Nature, he served as Editor in Chief on the first comprehensive encyclopedia on wildland fires and wildland-urban interface (WUI) fires. At the invitation of SFPE he served as section editor on the new section focused on WUI fires, as part of the upcoming 6th Edition of the SFPE handbook. He obtained his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois-Chicago in microgravity droplet combustion.