Fire Science Show

219 - Giving back with the SFPE Foundation - with Leslie Marshall

• Wojciech Węgrzyński

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In this episode, we give focus to the SFPE Foundation – a catalyst transforming how fire engineering research is funded, conducted, and shared globally. In this conversation with Leslie Marshall, Interim Executive Director of the SFPE Foundation, we discover how a relatively small organization has distributed over $1.2 million in grants, scholarships, and research funding since 2021. While the Foundation has existed since 1979, its recent expansion with dedicated staff has accelerated its impact across the fire engineering community worldwide.

Leslie reveals the Foundation's unique position in the fire safety ecosystem – while SFPE maintains the gold standard for current practice, the Foundation focuses on emerging topics and future challenges. This forward-looking approach has funded groundbreaking work, such as, in my opinion, landmark David Morissette's research on furniture fire variability, which began with a modest $5,000 student grant but yielded findings that challenge fundamental assumptions in fire modeling.

The conversation explores the Foundation's flagship Grand Challenges Initiative, a 10-year collaborative effort addressing four critical areas: energy and infrastructure, resilience and sustainability, climate change, and digitalization/AI/cybersecurity. With over 40 industry and academic partners worldwide, this initiative exemplifies how bringing diverse perspectives together can tackle complex problems that no single entity could solve alone.

For researchers, students, and professionals looking to give back to the fire safety community, Leslie outlines multiple pathways for involvement – from financial contributions to volunteering on advisory panels or working groups. The Foundation's commitment to open access ensures all research findings are freely available, maximizing their impact across the field.

You can learn more about the foundation on its website here.

Additional resources can be found here:

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Wojciech Wegrzynski:

Hello everybody, welcome to the Fire Science Show. You know that a big part of my professional life is participation in SFPE and that's the Society of Fire Protection Engineers. I've spoken about this on the podcast. I had the CEO, Chris Jelenewicz, on the podcast. But there's one activity of the SFPE or SFPE-related activity that we have not covered yet and even in the recent discussion with Chris, we both agreed that this topic has to be covered separately. That's SFPE Foundation, and we believe that SFPE Foundation is best discussed with the interim executive director of the SFPE Foundation, Leslie Marshall. And here we are today with Leslie on air discussing the history, role and plans for future of the SFPE Foundation. But it's not just a bland episode where someone just tells you a list of things about what the foundation is doing. During this interview, I had two important questions in mind that I really wanted to get an answer for.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

One is if I want to spend money on research, that is, I am happy to give some money forward that someone does research, and it's not necessarily a product or development for me, it's just for the sake of improving the knowledge of the mankind. What's the best way to do that? It's not simple. You can have grants that are worth millions which led nowhere. You have grants that costed 5,000 bucks and they made a huge impact on what we're doing every day. So I think Leslie is a good person to discuss this with, because she is constantly spending money and, given that the foundation has limited funds, they have to become very efficient at doing that. And the second thing is you know the idea of giving back doing that. And the second thing is you know the idea of giving back. I really wanted the listeners to hear about all the ways that you can give back to the community, not just in terms of money. Money is perhaps the easiest way to involve, but you know, participation in committees, in award committees, helping with the grant assessment, etc. All those things are ways to give back. You know, and we all ended up in this profession by accident of some sort a very happy accident for most of us and I can say for all of us. I think we all love it and if specific circumstances have not occurred 20 years ago for me, I would not be in here today and I'm just happy and I'm grateful to all the people that helped me back then, that held my hand, and today I want to help the ones that come after me. So, yeah, the idea of giving back is very important to me and in this episode you will hear a lot about the ways you can give back, and those two things were in my mind when I was carrying this episode with Leslie. You tell me if we got the answers for them and I will let you assess that straight after the intro. Let's spin the intro and jump into the episode.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

Welcome to the Firesize Show. My name is Wojciech Wigrzyński and I will be your host. Fire Science Show is brought to you in partnership with OFR Consultants, the UK's leading independent fire engineering consultancy. With a multi-award winning team and offices across the country. Ofr are experts in fire engineering, committed to delivering preeminent expertise to protect people, property and the planet. We're excited to announce that the applications for OFR's 2026 graduate program will open on October 1st about engineering and want to join a world-class organization recognized for its supportive culture and global expertise. Keep an eye on OFRconsultantscom for more details. Start your journey with OFR and help shape the future of fire engineering.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

And now back to the episode. Hello everybody, I'm joined today by Leslie Marshall, the Interim Executive Director at the SFPE Foundation. Hey, leslie, hey, it's good to be with you, happy that you took my invite. I had an interview with Chris Jelenewicz, the CEO of SFP. We scratched the ground of SFPE Foundation and I immediately realized this requires its own episode. And here we are super happy to talk about all the great stuff that's happening at the SFPE Foundation and ideas behind it. Perhaps a good place to start is if you could introduce the SFPE Foundation to the listeners and perhaps what distinguishes it from the SFPE itself.

Leslie Marshall:

It's a great place to start, so happy to do that. So many people may not be aware that the SFPE Foundation has actually been around. Many people may not be aware that the SFPE Foundation has actually been around. It's existed since 1979, but we only hired our first full-time dedicated staff in March of 2021. So it's been grants and scholarships and awards, and now we do more than $300,000 per year in each of the last two years and in fact, actually we've done about $1.2 million in terms of grants, scholarships, awards and research projects just since 2021. So if you think about that, just since bringing on staff, you know we've had a lot of work taking place and all of that is going back into the fire engineering community globally, right, so we're investing back and supporting the work that people are doing all over the world, and so that's an exciting thing to be a part of. We have a fantastic board of governors, fantastic staff and, of course, a lot of support from SFP, from Chris and from SFPE staff or from the SFPE board of directors.

Leslie Marshall:

So I think a good place to call out there is that the foundation is a separate charitable, nonprofit organization from SFPE behind the scenes and things, and also, you know we do coordinate with SFP.

Leslie Marshall:

So as we support different research initiatives, different projects, different things, you know we're constantly, you know all of that is sort of going back in service of the SFPE community more broadly.

Leslie Marshall:

All of our board members are SFPE members, right, so we've got a lot of really close ties there and I think a good way to sort of distinguish between what SFPE does and what the foundation does, if you think of SFPE as sort of the gold standard for the state of practice for fire engineering, right, they produce the SFPE handbook, they produce a lot of education on, you know, really, the state of the discipline in terms of the knowledge that folks should have and things like that.

Leslie Marshall:

And think about the foundation. You know we're an educational and scientific foundation. Our mission is to enhance the scientific understanding of fire in the social, natural and built environments and we do that primarily by funding research and education that's really focused on emerging topics, emerging technologies, emerging issue areas. We're really thinking about sort of that future forward, that future-oriented mindset. So we're looking at the ways that we can really close research gaps to support the profession or folks doing this work globally. So it's really about the foundation of sort of pushing those boundaries. And once those topics become a state of practice they sort of get absorbed into what you find an SAP.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

We'll talk more about how you turn funds into very high quality research in a second. Into very high quality research in a second, I'm wondering. And your funding? What are the sources that fuel this 1.2 million given out in grants? Where does it come from?

Leslie Marshall:

It's a great question.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

It's an important question. It's an important question.

Leslie Marshall:

And especially for us because we do a lot of fundraising.

Leslie Marshall:

So a big part of my job and the folks that work in the foundation is to secure funds to be able to then in turn, fund projects and fund research and things like that. So we have a pretty diverse portfolio in terms of the different sources of funding for the foundation and we really rely on that. We're intentionally looking at that. So funding comes from individual donations, so individuals can donate any amount. We have folks who donate what they can and folks who donate larger amounts, people who've been perhaps well-served by their career as fire engineers. They want to give back. They can make individual donations to the foundation. That's always appreciated and, as I said, any amount. It all goes to a good place. We're very efficient stewards of the funds that we have.

Leslie Marshall:

We also receive donations from SFPE chapters. SFPE chapters all over the world contribute, again typically based on what the chapter can afford to do. We have some very large chapters and we have some smaller chapters and again, every little bit makes a difference. And again, every little bit makes a difference and so those SFPE chapters can give and be recognized for that giving in the form of acknowledgments and so forth on social media, but also at the SFPE annual conference and in other ways. So we really do appreciate that chapter giving.

Leslie Marshall:

And we also have corporate donors. We have some companies that give what we call pure philanthropic gifts to the foundation. So they give to the general fund or to our annual operating fund to support the work that we do, and that of course, supports operating costs but it also supports research projects and the grants that we give out. And, finally, we are also an organization that seeks grant funding support specific projects. So we will apply for grants ourselves when we have a specific project in mind that we want to fund, and particularly if it needs a larger amount of funding, and so we have a number of grants from the US federal government that support some of that work.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

Good portfolio of funds coming and obviously yeah, I mean I wanted to do this podcast episode one because I know the foundation. I know some of the great projects. I've hosted students who visited my lab because of foundation grants. I've seen how helpful it was to them. I simply support this idea or this concept of providing people with opportunity, especially that fighting for funds in fire safety is very challenging when you are a part of broader mechanical or civil engineering, challenging when you are a part of broader mechanical or civil engineering.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

For us in Europe, panel number eight, you fight with people who try to cure cancer. They send drones to other planets and discover new nanomaterials. This is our panel, so that's what we compete with. So having a you know, a fire oriented fund, you at least know that this is going to go towards the fire research which, whatever it is, is probably great.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

But outside of great things that the foundation is doing, I also know a lot of people are perhaps interested in simply giving back.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

Like you said, some people are better served than others by the profession. It's a lovely world to be a part of the fire world and eventually a lot of us end up in a position where they would like to simply give back a little bit of what served them, and for me, my way of giving back is through the podcast. Some others could engage in educational activities or engage directly. Not everyone has time to do that, so perhaps you know giving back through charitable organization like the SFPE Foundation, philanthropy and etc. That's perhaps the simplest way you know to give back, and at least we know that you guys are going to do a great job. So, in the spirit of that, let's discuss all the great things that the foundation is doing and boy, I have a lot on my list, from the awards through grant challenges, educations. Let's maybe start with the student grants and student support. How is the foundation performing that and how students can actually reach out and what's in the offer for them?

Leslie Marshall:

Yes. So I would say that as an organization we're really committed to supporting students, and I think part of that goes back to what you were saying about, you know, people who are in the more advanced stages of their career. Look back on the people who gave them a hand early on, the people who reached out, the people who introduced them to fire engineering, right, and so I would say there's a really strong commitment from the foundation, from our board, to supporting that next generation of fire engineers. So we have a lot of programming that's for students, right, that's for folks in undergraduate and graduate programs, to give them that sort of level, that next step up right, to be able to support that. And we do that through a number of ways. So the two main ways are we have student research grants. We have a student research grant program. Those grants are $5,000 each and we do about eight of them a year right now, and we do them typically in two rounds. So we have usually an application process where proposals are due around April and then a second one where they're due in October, so students can apply in two different cycles for those grants. Those $5,000 may not seem like a lot on its face to some people, right, it's not going to sort of fund a PhD in their studies, but that $5,000 can make a really big difference to your point.

Leslie Marshall:

When there aren't other sources of dedicated funding, it's hard to get. These are kind of unique projects, sometimes really interdisciplinary. How do you find your home for that sort of funding? And we have some really great examples that highlight the impact of that fund. So I'm thinking, for example and I know his work has actually influenced your work but now Professor David Morissette, who's one of this year's recipients of the 2025 Foundation, the Bono Award for the Foundation to Recognize the Best Article in the Prior Years Issues of Fire Technology.

Leslie Marshall:

David's project that won the bono award right this year started with an SFPE foundation student research grant back in, I think, 2021, um, so that that grant actually funded the purchase of the 25 chairs that he burned in that experiment. So that that award-winning paper is called repeat fire tests of upholstered furniture variability and experimental observations right, and he had this idea. You know that you could. We make a lot of assumptions based on one or one off experiments about how things behave when they burn and this idea what happens if we burn the exact same item in the exact same conditions many, many times. Does it burn the same way? And it turns out it doesn't. And that has all these implications for things that we rely on in the fire engineering profession, right when it comes to setting parameters and expectations around fire behavior and so on, and so it's a really, I think, potentially impactful contribution, and it came out of a relatively small grant.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

As you said, for me it's a very important piece of work, Not because I'm a fan of burning chairs, but David was able to formalize a very interesting thought that the phases of fire could be connected to events that happen in the course of fire, not necessarily to the time that has passed, but to the fact that an event has happened. And I think this is extremely like. This is a paradigm shifting formalization. So, and then and yeah, I've been on a SFPE conference in Berlin. I was chairing the session he was presenting there and it was like, oh, like, this is awesome, like where else you can, you know, send up a grant that, yeah, I would like to burn a shitload of chairs, like Gucci, like, help me purchasing those. That's such a crazy idea, you know. And sometimes this is the perfect amount of funding for those people.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

I had students visiting my laboratory. I had Diego from Spain, ifa from Malaysia, who spent some time at the ITB with the SFPE student fund. There's $5,000. It's maybe not that much money, but it allows you to fly to Poland and spend one, two months in the lab and we will take care of you when you take the effort to come and visit us. So I think, while it was again again on the paper, not a huge grant like if you put it in your you know cv. It's not a massive uh, you will not get massive points for that on your cv but it really allows you to to do a lot with that and I I think if you're smart about where those funds go and I don't like from I'm now speaking from the experiences of my students the formalities were not really annoying, like it was a fairly easy grant because I also, you know, as a senior researcher, I have my own experience with different funding foundations and it's not necessarily always easy, especially when it comes down to you know, some accounting on where the money went from, all the proofs, the invoices and everything.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

It's sometimes so annoying, even for small grants. From what I've heard, it was not annoying at all with SFP. So I hope you do not introduce too many formal boundaries to those poor students and if anyone listening has an idea about some research grants that you would like to do and perhaps my lab is something that could be useful for you, hey, let's get in contact and you can try. It's harsh competition but it's achievable. Anything else for students in your plate.

Leslie Marshall:

Yeah, so I would say I'm glad to hear you say that, because we do spend a lot of time trying to make the process as easy and efficient as possible for people to be able to apply. We really don't want there to be barriers. Creating barriers to access to the funding is not helpful, and so we tried to do our best to really make it accessible.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

It's also like 5K. I mean, yeah, if they waste it, basically what they've wasted is a possibility for someone else to do a nice research project. But it's not the end of the world. And you know, putting barriers in front to make sure to prevent waste or prevent like a wrongful use of the funds, sometimes just prevents the good use of the funds very much. That's my experience with the funding agencies. It is really counterproductive. So I mean we have enough boundaries and limits in our world. Like call out is now Dr Natalia Flores-Kiraz's work at Stellenbosch University in South Africa.

Leslie Marshall:

But she also back in 2020, received a student research grant. We want to talk about the impact of a single grant, that grant. She ended up doing research on the development and application of forensic investigation procedures for informal settlement fires, ended up publishing at least three I think even more than that peer-reviewed journal articles specifically on informal settlement fires, covering topics from WUI fires all the way to human behavior to non-building fires, fire dynamics all kinds of topics touched on there. But she then you talk about getting the ball rolling in your career right. This is something that awards do. This is something grants do, no matter how small right, you get that first one and it can really create a sort of snowball effect in your career and being able to get new opportunities and the next opportunity and so on. So I think you know we can really be a catalyst in that way, and that work that she did there ended up setting her up really well in her work and she later in 2023 was named one of the first Grand Challenges Initiative fellows for resilience and sustainability for that working group. So she then had a fellowship from the foundation to support her work in the GCI resilience and sustainability working group, co-authored the white paper that came out of that and now co-chairs that working group and has a senior lecturer position now at Stellenbosch. And I would say, something that's really lovely to see for someone like me is when someone comes through the system, she's now a professor. Now she's writing recommendation letters and sponsoring students who are applying for student research grants, right. So you see someone who's really had a great start to their career and now she's supporting students coming out of that program and they're doing fantastic things at Stellenbosch. So it's really good to see. That's another good example.

Leslie Marshall:

So there's GCI fellowship program, student research grants.

Leslie Marshall:

We also just last year formalized a student travel grant program. So now, one of the things we talk about with these projects, right, we don't want, you know, just to have research that ends up in a report or ends up in a journal. That never has sort of that connection to practice. So we do a lot of work to try and raise awareness of the takeaways from these projects, the results and so on, and we also want to give the students, the researchers who've completed the projects, a chance to present those projects in front of their peers at the SFPE annual conference or similar conferences or events where they can benefit from getting a lot of eyes on that work. Getting to network, build relationships that face-to-face at conferences is huge for their potential career trajectory. You never know who you're going to meet, and so we've got this fund now where students can apply to receive travel grant funding to attend SFPE and SFPE Foundation affiliated events and present their work. So it's really great to see that, too Is there a catalog of those events?

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

How does an event become SFPE affiliated?

Leslie Marshall:

I understand that the SFPE conferences are by it's in their name, but yes, so any event that's hosted by SFPE or SFPE foundation would count, and then we do allow people to propose another relevant event, so it would need to be relevant to fire engineering and the work that they're doing in some way. I will say, though, going back to how people can support the foundation Currently currently, we receive far more requests, far more requests for travel grant funding than we can support, than we can afford to support, and so we prioritize those who are going to present at SFPE and SFPE foundation affiliated events, and, to date, you know that has taken up all of our resources just to fund those requests. So, if you are listening and you want to make an individual donation or you belong to a company that would like to, we do have ways for companies to direct donations specifically to the Student Travel Fund to support that, because it's certainly in high demand.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

Yeah, I can imagine perhaps we'll need to have an off-the-record conversation with IFSS because I think IFSS and European and Asia Shania fire symposia could be interesting things for people and they would love to travel there. They're also like, usually quite expensive to travel. The planet is quite large actually, and those are large distances.

Leslie Marshall:

And we know travel costs are only going up right the cost of flights hotels, all of these things. So you know, if the same dollar today isn't worth, doesn't go as far as it did, you know, yesterday kind of thing. But the events you named are absolutely appropriate. We would consider IFSS, of course, as an appropriate place for us to support travel. It's just that today we need to raise some more funds so we can support.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

There's also the student award. I remember Matt Bonder won that one 2020, for research we've done together, so I was super proud of Matt. They did a great job on our database. I remember working on that in my office with them on that. It was such a fun. We were very happy with this award. So another great thing for students. Anything else, or shall we move to grant challenges?

Leslie Marshall:

Well then, I would just highlight, on the awards for folks, that we have several different awards for students and so, especially if you do human behavior research the Prue Award we are always looking for folks to apply for that award and then, if any other topic, you would be eligible under the Student Scholar Award or under the Mauer Global Scholar Award, depending on where you're located. So please do apply. Those are also easy application processes as far as these things go, so please encourage folks to apply and apply if you're listening and you're a student.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

And I also always encourage people to nominate their colleagues, encourage people to nominate their colleagues. Being in some of those award committees not in the foundation, but in general the awards are always given from the pool of candidates. There are a few awards, like your Bono Award, where you look into the entirety of our technology journal, but most of the awards are given to someone from a smaller group of candidates, exactly, and if someone is not a candidate, it kind of excludes them, right?

Leslie Marshall:

You cannot win if you don't put your name in for contribution. So please what's the? Harm.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

If you feel like someone deserves it. If you don't put them forward, they will never get it. If you put them forward, they may get it. So, yeah, that's an important caveat of awards. Let's talk about the Grand Challenges, because that was a very interesting thing. When did this start? Like three years ago. It felt like a COVID project.

Leslie Marshall:

Around that time. I really kicked things off in 2022. So the Grand Challenges initiative is a flagship initiative for us. Fundamentally it's a 10-year effort and we say 10 years but really that's because we want to focus people on the future and on the next 10 years, but we anticipate this effort going beyond that. But it's a 10-year effort to achieve collaboration between academics, industry, research, partners around shared areas of interest, shared priorities when it comes to investing strategically in research and education and outreach. That's going to advance the field of fire protection engineering or fire engineering on topics that are not unique to fire engineering right. So, when we think about global grand challenges, the four topic areas that are part of that initiative include energy and infrastructure, not specific to fire engineers, but where fire engineers have a lot to say and be involved in.

Leslie Marshall:

Resilience and sustainability, climate change, and then digitalization, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity is its own working group, and so we kicked off that initiative in 2022. We picked those four topic areas based on feedback from the fire engineering community, organized ourselves in those four topic areas and solicited partners to join the initiative, and now we have more than 40 industry and research and academic partners that are part of the initiative all over the world and each of those entities, organizations, has representatives that serve, and each of the four topic areas has its own working group. We published a white paper in each of those topic areas with the contributions of all the working group members in 2023. And then we have been working since then to fund priority projects out of that. And then we actually you know earlier you asked me about revenue sources We've started to host in-person events, gci summits on particular topics that have been identified as areas of need by members of the working group. So it's really a collaborative. We're hosting it as the foundation, as the SFPE Foundation. We provide the platform, the staff support to move it forward, but all of the partners contribute in different ways.

Leslie Marshall:

Academic partners contribute, you know, in-kind research, expertise, knowledge.

Leslie Marshall:

Industry partners can contribute funding that goes towards supporting research projects and so on. And so, a good example being, we funded in the last year, through the foundation and from some of those resources that we were able to raise through that initiative, we funded projects on the digital interface between, or the interface between, digital buildings and fire service operations. That's a project that Lund University is working on. Now we funded one that's on the health and environmental impacts of large scale battery energy storage system fires. That's led by Dr Jamie McAllister Halliwell Fire Research Group, and then we have another project on fire testing of sustainable materials. That one's being led by Stellan Bosch. So we have a number of projects. Our latest one, the one that we funded most recently, is on energy storage system hazards, led by Zag and Fire and Risk Alliance out of the US, and so all these projects have been identified as top priorities by the GCI partner organizations and so moving those forward. So it's not just the sort of white papers that sit on the internet, right, we want to actually solve things.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

I always wanted to understand, gain clarity on the structure. So, basically, you've identified four fields where those challenges lie. You have identified a leader in each of those groups to start with, and around the leader it was built some sort of like a group of people, a panel of people then, that then work together to further go, uh, in ways they find suitable, I assume, through white papers, collaborations, papers, projects, uh, and basically that goes deeper as like on its own, kind of like like independently of you. So so it's not just one project to write a white paper, it's more like creating a platform that will work on this part, okay.

Leslie Marshall:

Exactly, it's a shared platform and a shared space for collaboration, right? If you think of the foundation, you know we can kind of serve this unique sort of neutral third party role that kind of bridges that space between industry and academia and lets people collaborate from all over based on their interests and skill sets, right? So, like when a company joins or when an academic partner joins, they don't have to participate in all four areas. They could say hey, our research group really focuses on building, information modeling or built environment systems or smart buildings or something like that. We really just want to participate in the digitalization AI and cyber group, and so they'll send folks to participate in that. We really just want to participate in the digitalization AI and cyber group, and so they'll send folks to participate in that.

Leslie Marshall:

And those conversations are what drives things. So, for example, what's happening right now in the working groups? We have those white papers as the sort of high level roadmap, right? Think of those as, like, where we see the gaps and the needs at a high level and then within the working groups, now we're really drilling down to okay, we know where the gaps are, but which of these gaps can we actually turn into a sort of 10-year trajectory, a series of research or educational endeavors that's going to get us to where we need to be right, Building each year, project after project, on the next right. If we want to be here in 10 years, let's work backwards and think what do we need to do today? And so those working groups now are actually developing RFPs that we expect to seek funding for and look for researchers to participate in on topics that are deemed most important, where we could have the biggest impact on the field and therefore on the community globally.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

And what were the fellowships within the within the ground challenges? How does this work?

Leslie Marshall:

Yeah. So when we first launched the initiative, we said you know we want, we know we want to have a working group in each of these four topic areas and we want these working groups to produce a white paper. But volunteers we have an incredible community of volunteers, right. But as you know, you're a volunteer yourself in many different aspects of the work that SFB does, right. It takes a lot of time and energy and sometimes it can be useful to have one person who's sort of got their time dedicated to something, and it's easier to contribute as a volunteer when there's someone else who's sort of driving the bus, so to speak, right. So we created this GCI student fellowship program at the beginning. So there'd be a GCI fellow who would be an advanced graduate student or postdoc that would be assigned to each of the four working groups with the idea that this is someone that will receive a fellowship from us that's going to support their time spent on this project and really developing that white paper. So we actually had four GCI fellows that we did a competitive application process for that invited people to apply from all over the world in the topic that was suited. So we had people who were already, you know deep in their either PhD theses or postdoc research in this area, supporting each area. So we had those fellowships 2024 to 2025 timeframe.

Leslie Marshall:

We partnered with Jensen Hughes to fund a new applied research fellowship program.

Leslie Marshall:

That's part of the GCI, where we match a student with, in this case, the industry host partner to basically have them be able to benefit from getting to do the research that they're already interested in in an applied setting and working with an industry mentor.

Leslie Marshall:

And so the first student to come out of that program was Amy Metz, who's at Oregon State University and just wrapped up her project, did a webinar on that, an open access webinar on that through the foundation, looking at VOC contamination in water distribution systems following wildfires. So that was that project and we expect to do another round of applied research fellowship programs next year. But again, that came out of GCI partners saying you know, we really need to bridge this industry research gap. How do we get folks who are doing this research, you know, helping us on these problems that our clients are coming to us with, you know, as consultants on a daily basis? How do we really connect those things? And so we looked at doing this sort of applied research program to benefit sort of, you know, both the students getting an opportunity to have their work sort of play out in the real world in real time and be part of that and see what that looks like, at the same time as the company is getting to build connections with the you know, that academic-based community.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

Okay, you said it's a 10-year-long initiative, so those leaders will rotate, or?

Leslie Marshall:

Yes.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

Okay.

Leslie Marshall:

Yeah, so right now in the working groups, after we published the white papers, we sort of did a refresh. So you think about the first sort of three years of the program had a chair and a GCI fellow assigned to each working group and all the working groups had between 20 and 30, in some cases up to 35 volunteers in each working group. Now we've sort of refreshed those working groups and this year have a co-chair, so two people leading up each of the working groups, and I believe two of the original four GCI fellows have now stayed around as co-chairs for their groups because they're in different sort of places in their careers now, and then we have a new leadership in those other roles. And then we have a new leadership in those other roles and in some cases we've had the chair from the original group stay but be joined by a new co-chair to sort of refresh that group, and so we'll have those opportunities for leadership turnover in the future as well.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

And if someone I'm not talking about a sponsor, but if someone would like to participate let's say there's someone who just graduated and they would like to be involved in, let's say, ai Is there a possibility for those people to eventually step into those groups and participate in that? Or is there a rare recruitment? How does it look like?

Leslie Marshall:

So we have a few different options.

Leslie Marshall:

Ideally, the way the model works is that the companies primarily for-profit companies, but in some cases not-for-profits that do make contributions industry essentially subsidizes the participation of academics, right?

Leslie Marshall:

So we ask for donations from the corporate partners to support the work of the initiative, but we do not ask for any financial contribution from the academic partners. There's many reasons for that, but we know it opens up the door to be able to collaborate in different ways with academic institutions. And so at this time, ideally, if someone wanted to join, if they're part of a company, we would say let's reach out to me, let's set up a meeting. Maybe we can talk to your leadership in your company about why it would be a good idea to join, how it may benefit. I should say the GCI is specifically designed to be really directed, right, so it lets companies participate in a charitable effort, but where the work is all directed so it can be really mission aligned, you can line it up with the things that your company cares about. So that's make the difference from a pure philanthropic gift. But OK, so great if a company can join and then any number of their employees can participate in any number of the groups.

Leslie Marshall:

That's one way. If you belong to, and if you reach out to me and you said I'm a assistant professor at this university, I'd like to participate, then I would say to you would it be possible, you know, for your department to join? It's no cost, but that would let other people in your department also participate and we'd put your department's logo on the page and it creates, you know, a stronger connection to your university. And so that's one option. If neither of those is an option, you're an independent researcher or you're part of a company that's not going to join but you want to participate, we also have other ways to volunteer. So we have external advisory panels for projects. So whenever we fund a major research project, we have between three and five subject matter experts on an external advisory panel provide oversight, so you could volunteer to serve on one of those. And then there's like a form that you fill out, submit your CV, basically, so we can make sure you're an expert on the thing that you're going to provide input on. So that's one way to volunteer. Another way would be, as we have more in-person events, program committee volunteers are really helpful, as you know, can be a lot to review, abstracts to review.

Leslie Marshall:

You know, we have a few other things we're working on in terms of ways that people can support events, particularly so an individual could always volunteer. So, for example, next year we're hosting the first in-person WUI fire engineering summit. That'll be a technical conference focused on fire engineering applications in wildland urban interface fires and for that we have a really expansive program committee If you go to the website for that event. But that's because we want to have people on there from industry, from academia, from government agencies, because they all bring different perspectives to that problem and so there's a lot of different ways people can give back and volunteer their time there. Let's say separately. We have a separate WUI working group, so if someone is particularly interested in wildland urban interface fires, you could volunteer to be part of that group.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

The links are, of course, in the show notes, but you know that already, dear listener. You also had an AI summit this year in Berkeley. My Jakub was there and from what he told me, it was an amazing event. Congratulations on organizing that. So that's great. How about the outcomes of that? So, okay, a lot of work is done, a lot of knowledge is created in those working groups. They work out some very useful things. How are those things shared with the public? Do you have some sort of open access policy? What's the foundation take on releasing the findings of those projects?

Leslie Marshall:

Yeah, that's a great point. So for all of our projects we try both to publish some sort of written report, some written takeaways, depending on the nature of the project, and that's for free, right? You can download those from our website. There's an open library where you can download those directly. There's no cost to doing so. We also, for all of our major research projects, always have an open access webinar. So major research projects being ones that are about 30,000 or more, where they typically have professional research teams on them, those projects we always do an open access webinar.

Leslie Marshall:

Speaking to the AI Summit in particular so that was our first time doing an in-person event. We partnered with University of California Berkeley a fire research open access or three webinars on AI and fire engineering topics as sort of precursors to the summit, to get people engaged and on the same page. But those two webinars are still available on demand, so anybody can access those. One of them was done by Jonathan Hodges. It's an introduction to AI methods specifically for fire engineers, so encourage folks to check that out. We also have a second one on there. That's a panel discussion on issues of ethics and AI applications for fire engineers. So both of those are open access. Even if you were not there at the summit, you can still view those on demand. We also published after the fact. We held a webinar we actually did the same webinar twice to be able to capture different time zones, make it easier for people to join live from different parts of the world where we did a recap of the presentations, key takeaways and things that came up in the discussion, so you can also access that webinar. It's a post-summit webinar that anyone can view.

Leslie Marshall:

And then, finally, I would say, perhaps most importantly, when we host these GCI summits as the foundation, any sort of net revenue from those events we're committed to funding and supporting research projects and other initiatives related to the topic of that event. So, functionally, the AI Summit, the AI and Fire Engineering Summit, was a fundraiser. So at the end of the day, after expenses, we raised about $30,000 to put towards an AI Summit or an AI and Fire Engineering project. And during the summit, we held a workshop at the end where we asked participants to tell us, based on what you've heard in the last two days, what do you think is most important, what should we prioritize, where should we allocate this funding?

Leslie Marshall:

Collected all that data, all that feedback, and then we formed an AI task group within the Digitalization, ai and Cybersecurity Working Group. That AI task group is looking at all that feedback, looking at the 10-year plan from the white paper and working on narrowing down a project that we can fund with that money, with that sort of fundraising effort that will contribute to that trajectory of where we want to be in the next 10 years. So I think when we think about these summits, we're really thinking about them as hands-on. You don't just come and present which is a great thing to do, because there's lots of educational benefits to presenting and networking at these events but also by being there, you can help us decide what we're going to fund next in this topic area. So that's a big differentiator and something that we're excited to be part of.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

I mean, this kind of makes sense. It's an interesting scheme that you use, like first some fundraising to start projects. Those projects yield some outcomes. Those outcomes are valuable to people up to a point where they are happy to pay for an in-person event, for example, to be a part of, and this kind of attracts sponsorships, other opportunities to gain more funds, and eventually you have another source of income that you spend on another good project. So I think it's an interesting model of operations that you are developing and, yeah, that sounds really good.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

I wonder, like if I ask you what's the best way someone can spend money on research, the first answer would be to support the foundation, of course. But I would also like to ask you, like from your experience running this, how you decide what are the efficient ways of, or what have you learned as a leader of this organization on how to efficiently spend money on doing good things in fire science, because it's not an easy thing if you think about it. How to spend money well that you get the most out of a dollar spent there. Any advice you could give to the?

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

other foundations out there that may be competing with you. I mean, come on, we're building a better world together.

Leslie Marshall:

Yeah, I don't like to think of it as competing. Everyone always comes. They always tell us you know it's your competitors out there and I'm like you know.

Leslie Marshall:

The truth is we often collaborate with them because we're all small foundations, so we'll often team up to either, like we've jointly funded projects, for example, with NFPA's Research Foundation, with the FPRF. We've jointly funded a couple of projects over the years and teamed up, because the reality is research is expensive to do in most cases. In many cases, whether we're talking about funding a postdoc or funding a PhD student or the specific materials or things that you would need to do, testing or whatever else, it is Research is expensive. We're a small foundation.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

In a world of big needs.

Leslie Marshall:

In a world of big needs, right. And so this is really what's behind the GCI too is to say, you know, if everybody comes together and gives a little bit, then we have a bigger pool to work with, then we can have a bigger impact collectively than any of us can do by ourselves. And then also, if we're all sort of in our own silos, making incremental change, you know, we don't want to duplicate what other people are doing, right, it's to me, it's a waste of money if the foundation ends up allocating funds to do something that's already been done by 10 other people in the last two years. Right, that's not a good use or an effective or an efficient use of our funds. So it's better if we can be, you know, collaborative and trying to find where are those places that we can, given the resources we have, we can make the most difference, right, and sometimes that looks like a $5,000 student research grant. Sometimes that looks like a $30,000 or $40,000 grant. Sometimes it's a bigger initiative where we go after funding from other institutions to be able to support a larger project with multiple collaborators. That takes a couple of years or so.

Leslie Marshall:

But I would say for us, we're constantly thinking about how can we add to or build on or go into areas where other people aren't but where we know we need to be? So when we're making decisions, that's what we're thinking about. If we're looking at something, we say, look, there's already a lot of people doing work on this topic. Maybe that's not the best space for us, unless we think we can add something specific and incremental that will make a difference. Maybe it's better for us to be the first or one of the first funders in this other space that's emerging right.

Leslie Marshall:

That's why we always come back to these like emerging topics and technologies, because I think we, we think, given that we're relatively small, that we can make a bigger difference in some of those areas that are sort of less explored, less tapped, where there's not available funding, where there aren't large funding organizations already making available lots of funds, and that could be on a, on a topic. It could also be geographic, right. It could be that there are parts of the world where people really don't have as much access to certain kinds of funds, and perhaps we can fill in some of those gaps there. So that's, I guess, how I would say and I say we in all these cases, but we, you know, being the foundation as a whole right, our board of governors is really committed to those ideals and I think it really shows up and how we're always trying to improve on our processes and impact.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

What's more important, a perfect person or a perfect topic to research? What do you mean by?

Leslie Marshall:

a perfect person.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

If you have like, if you find somewhere a really like interesting scientist who's really passionate about a topic that's perhaps not very interesting, like you know, I'm thinking about someone who's trying to burn 25 chairs or maybe you have, like a topic like lithium ion batteries which, like bazillion people in the world are researching altogether, because it's a hundred billion dollar industry, you know, and you have your 5,000 bucks to spend. Like it's a tough decision where to go.

Leslie Marshall:

Yes, so actually, I think the answer to that is we're always looking at potential impact. So, if the study goes as planned and we find out the things from the study that we expect the questions get answered that we hope to answer what's the potential knock-on effect of that, what's the potential impact of that? And that's what leads us to give $5,000 to someone who wants to burn 25 chairs in the same conditions, right, because it turns out, if the answer to that is they don't burn the same, that's a big deal, right, and so in that case it is the topic. It might seem like bizarre, but it's the potential impact of you know the answers to those questions, right? And I think that fundamentally is it Because the same thing, if you think about to your point, there's so much money going into research on lithium ion batteries, right? So much money If there's a project that needs to be done in that space, probably at this point in the development there's better partners.

Leslie Marshall:

But there could be tangents or offshoots from that space that people are not paying attention to, where we could make a difference, whether it's on an application in a space that nobody else is looking at right, because maybe it's not as commercializable or it's something, but it has the potential to impact, you know, more people's lives, or has the potential to impact community safety at scale, or something Like. When we think about impact, we might be thinking about lives saved, quality of life. We might be thinking about the practice of fire engineering. Maybe this is a project that has the potential to transform the way fire protection engineers do their work right. So we're thinking about impact on many different scales, but I would say it's the impact that drives it and how do you view projects which have a potential in commercialization of the outcomes?

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

Because a lot of even fundamental research in many aspects of the world can lead to developments, especially if you work around models and modeling in general, numerical modeling. Those things can give a competitive advantage. Like, what's your take on that?

Leslie Marshall:

So we're committed to open principles of science right. Historically, we have not funded projects that are primarily to develop commercial products or that would lead that way. We tend to be focused on projects that if they're going to produce something at the end, if it's going to be a tool or something, that's something that we're then going to make available to anyone. For the most part, that's been our sort of approach. And then when we have, for example, federally funded by the US federal government projects, those are producing tools that are open access.

Leslie Marshall:

If you look at the WUI virtual handbook that the foundation has produced and we just released a second edition of that that's an open access resource that anyone anywhere in the world can go to that website and go to sfporg slash wui handbook and access those resources and that's by design, right. So we look for projects that are going to let us do that kind of work. And when you're supporting academic researchers, we're supporting academic researchers, not who are trying to create a product that's then going to be. That may be something that happens down the line, but like if you were to come to us and say I want research funds to develop this product that then I'm going to patent and then I'm like. That's not a good match for us.

Leslie Marshall:

In part because we have IP stipulations in our agreements with grantees. That would mean that we would share in that, so it wouldn't be a good match. I think that there's other funds out there. If you're trying to, you know entrepreneurship type funds. If you're looking for funds to support the development of a product, that's not us. We're really public facing.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

I've asked that question because in my country I'm very used to the fact that there is the Fundamental Research Agency, which funds only like fundamental science, no applied science. It only responds on the fundamental science, no applied science, and there is a separate applied science agency which only funds the applied sciences with potential commercial implications. So we have to be very sharp in which pathway you go and I must say I have not seen such a strict, sharp distinction when looking through the SFPE Foundation. Things Fantastic Well, so much happening. What are the next things in the near future for the foundation that keep you going? What's on your plate right now?

Leslie Marshall:

Yeah, I think right now one of the things I'm most excited about is the WUI fire engineering summit we're doing next year, because we've had a number of volunteers involved in getting the original WUI working group off the ground at the foundation since 2021. And even some folks were working on it before that. Albert Simeone, alex Maranguitis and others had this idea right of really developing WUI work through that fire protection lens and I think that's a really exciting event to see in person. We've had a couple of virtual WUI summits over the years, but doing a big in-person event. We're going to be co-hosting that with the University of Maryland Department of Fire Protection Engineering and with FSRI, so UL's Fire Safety Research Institute. We'll team up with them to host that. That will be a little less than a year out, so we'll do a formal call for abstracts.

Leslie Marshall:

We have a fantastic group of people volunteer on the program committee. That's going to event's going to include some things that we've not done before but we think will make it more exciting for attendees, including we expect to work with the journal to produce a special issue coming out of papers that are accepted as part of that. So different ways to get academics excited. We expect to do a student competition, pitch competition on site as part of the event and ways to get people excited about that. So we're looking at ways to bring in folks and get them excited about doing work that is applied you know, fire engineering, but in that wildland, urban interface context and really bringing in engineers from many different backgrounds but really focused on that shared piece. I'm excited about that. I think that's going to be a really great event.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

We're also you forgot to mention when and where.

Leslie Marshall:

Oh, thank you.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

That's an important piece of information. You've teased that to the extent and we have not told people when and where.

Leslie Marshall:

Good luck to you. If you haven't been invited. No, it's going to be August 10th to 12th, so two full days on August 11th and 12th, and we'll have some pre-conference on the 10th in 2026. And it's going to be at the University of Maryland in College Park, maryland in the US Perfect. So it should be hopefully a pretty good location for people to get to Be, a good location for people to get to be, a good opportunity for people who have not been to see Maryland's department and the tools and things they have in their lab will include a lab to learn things.

Leslie Marshall:

As part of that and some other exciting things to come we'll announce later this year.

Leslie Marshall:

And then I would say more generally, we expect to do two in-person events a year starting next year, a year starting next year, and so we'll be announcing the second event later on and then every year after that we'll look to do two in-person events and we've sort of gotten our feet wet by having the first couple in the US, but we expect to take these events outside of the US so people can get involved in person in different parts of the world, different global regions, and that's part of our efforts to involve some of our GCI partners who've been engaged, but also to make it easier for people to attend who are not based in North America. And looking out as well to see how we can perhaps make even more of those conference proceedings available to folks who can't attend in person in different ways. So I'm excited about that, also generally looking forward to the next wave of research projects that come out of the GCI working group, so as I said you know they're really pushing to produce.

Leslie Marshall:

you know what's that? 10-year specific research projects coming out of each of those four areas and I think it'd be really exciting to be part of that and bring people in as part of that effort and look to see the projects that come out there. So I'd say those are at the top of my mind right now. And the other thing I'm excited about, if you're going to be in Vancouver, in British Columbia, the SFPE annual conference. We'll have a lot of students presenting posters there, some different breakout research presentations. We get to honor our awardees. We have some amazing folks who won awards this year and have some other ways to recognize people there. I always really enjoy getting to see people face-to-face at the annual conference, so I hope folks will be there.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

Fantastic. Yeah, this will definitely go out before Vancouver. So feel invited to meet Leslie and see the people who make this foundation really, because in the end I I mean there's a ton of people involved in the back end, you know, in your committees and everything but, but in the end it's it's really nice to observe how, how those students grow and and what really comes out. I think that that gives the most joy at least that's what I would think that you know observing that, yeah, it's money well spent. It gave someone a, it took someone on a trajectory they were not expecting, or there has been a discovery that made a difference.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

Those are the best things that could come out from such an initiative and by supporting an organization like SFPE Foundation, you give yourself a chance to participate in those important things for many of the students and benefactors of the foundation. Leslie, thank you so much for coming and sharing all of this with us. I think we will be happy observing how the foundation is growing. We will be looking closely on the grand challenges and how they move forward and perhaps we shall meet again with some of your grand challenges leaders in the podcast to discuss the important findings You're closing to the mid part of your 10 years maybe not yet, but almost there. So perhaps a good point to reflect and see what more is coming out of that.

Leslie Marshall:

And that'd be fantastic and I'd be happy to introduce some folks who could speak to some of the more nuanced and technical aspects of what those groups are doing. And I appreciate you so much for having me on to have a chance to share a little bit more about the foundation and our work and how we try to give back to the community and make good use of any funds that are interested to us. So I really appreciate that.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

And that's it. Thank you for listening. It appears that you can do a lot of good when you have funds for it, but the effect of scale is insane in here and when you reach critical mass, a lot of new possibilities open and I really appreciate what Leslie has done with the foundation. It has only been a few years that the foundation has staff full-time staff on it and the growth is insane. I really, really appreciate what they are doing in the foundation and how this affects a lot of young researchers worldwide.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

When I was starting, it was much more difficult, I think, to get those funds from outside your own country. Everyone has their own ways of getting research money in their own countries, but those universal systems for researchers across the globe this was very difficult. That's my belief. Now, with the foundation, this is so much more achievable and they also really like to support people from different parts of the world. So it's also an opportunity to get some funding. Build your name up, I think. My experience in Poland. I didn't have a grant from SFPE Foundation when I was starting, but I assumed that if you had one, it would put you in a very favorable position in your own country because you were able to attract funding from overseas from a prestigious foundation. I think that counts, actually, in your CV much more than many people would appreciate. So, yeah, so many good things happening out there. I support this mission of SFPE Foundation. I support SFPE in general and I'm simply happy that good things are happening and there are people passionate about doing good in the fire safety.

Wojciech Wegrzynski:

Go check their websites, go check what they're doing. There's a lot of resources, useful resources. There's information about the summit. There's information about the Grand Challenges Initiative. There's a lot of resources for you to look through. I highly recommend visiting them and for me, that would be it for this Wednesday and the next Wednesday. I will bring you something else from the world of fire science and engineering and I'm pretty sure it's going to be interesting to you. So thank you for today and see you here next Wednesday. Cheers, bye, thank you.