April 2005, Issue #39

Cool Engineer of the Month

Profile: Erica Kuligowski — Fire Protection Engineer

Erica Kuligowski is a fire protection engineer in the Fire Research Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). At NIST Erica is developing an understanding of the systems that protect people from fire. So, how did Erica get interested in fire protection engineering? Well, thanks to the Women in Engineering program — it was easy! As a junior in high school, Erica spent 6 weeks of the summer living on the University of Maryland campus in College Park. During the summer, she learned about all of the engineering disciplines offered by the University, such as mechanical, electrical, civil, fire protection, chemical, and biomedical engineering. Erica was excited about the challenges and opportunities in fire protection engineering (FPE) as the result of a demonstration of computer modeling of fire presented by two FPE students. The computer model was able to show how fast fire and smoke can spread through a home creating life threatening conditions even far from the flames. From that point on, Erica knew that she wanted to be an engineer that helped to save people from the threats of fire. She wanted to become a fire protection engineer, by completing the degree program at the University of Maryland.

At NIST, Erica has become an expert at understanding the reaction of people to fire emergencies. Erica studies the decisions people make when they hear a fire alarm, including what factors are critical in the decision to leave a building. She studies the movement of people through doorways, corridors, and on stairs to track how fast they can be expected to move under different fire and smoke conditions. She uses information from fire drills to help develop and improve computer models of people movement to safety during fire emergencies in buildings. The computer models help design building features so that anyone working in a building will have time to escape before fire conditions can threaten their lives. Erica has also learned from those that have escaped from actual fire emergencies. She has interviewed people who escaped from the fire and smoke conditions in the World Trade Center Towers in 2001 prior to the collapse of the buildings to understand what behaviors they performed during the evacuation. Erica participates in technical conferences, sharing the knowledge that she has gained through research and fire investigations with other fire protection engineers around the world. She hopes that every bit of what she has learned is applied to help make the world safer from fire.