Advancing our knowledge in fire - MSc research presentations...and sad goodbyes

At the end of last week, 23 graduating MSc students completed one of the most important and one of the last tasks of their studies. They presented their research project work in front of an Academic/Industrial panel and in front of their peers and they defended their methodology and findings by answering probing questions from the audience.

The research project aims at providing new knowledge and understanding and hopefully the tools and know-how which can be used by other engineers and scientists in the design of safer buildings, systems and processes and helping the regulatory authorities make correct policy decisions.

The presentations covered a diverse range of topics, including for example:

• the better design of blast walls in the oil and gas industry,
• the "stay put" policy in high rise buildings and the underlying engineering concepts and evidence
• the toxicity of burning materials
• the movement and control of smoke using CFD analysis
• ...and many others

 Chris Barret congratulating the best presentation winner of each day - Andy Birch (left) and Neil Duddy (right)

Chris Barret was in attendance representing WSP, the Sponsors of the Research Project at Leeds, who kindly offer a prize for the best project overall (to be announced after the project reports have been submitted and assessed) and a prize for the best presentation on each of the presentation days.

Andy Birch won the first day with ‘An Investigation into the beneficial installation of natural smoke ventilation to domestic three storey single family dwellings via Physical Scale Model and CFD modelling’ which as the name implies involved some controlled fires in his back garden which greatly impressed the assessors.

Neil Duddy won the second day with a project on ‘The Fire Performance of Composite Bunding’.

Well done and congratulations to both of you!

The day was well rounded off with suitable celebrations at the ‘Library’ across the road, for those could attend.

...With a large dose of sadness

These presentations unfortunately also marked the end of the last year that the Fire & Explosion Engineering MSc at Leeds has recruited new students. As many of you know the School and Faculty have decided that the investment priorities were elsewhere with the consequent decision to wind down the programme after this year. So for the next two years we will be seeing the remaining part-time students through to completion of the programme.

As a further consequence of this decision, Peter Riley, the Course Tutor decided it was time to seek new challenges elsewhere at the end of this month.

Peter, over his 15 years as part of the team, has led the development of the distance learning elements of the course and has tirelessly guided and supported hundreds of students through the programme. On behalf of my colleagues and all of our current students and alumni I can say that we are grateful and indebted to Peter for his absolutely critical contribution to a very successful programme and wish him the best of success in any of his future endeavours. Thank you Peter.