July 15, 2013 – The Fire Protection Research Foundation (Foundation), an affiliate of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), announced winners of the 2013 William M. Carey and Ronald K. Mengel awards. Participants of the 2013 Suppression, Detection and Signaling Research and Applications (SUPDET) Symposium voted to select winning papers to be recognized. SUPDET is the Foundation’s annual symposium on suppression and detection research, and applications. Awards will be presented to winners at the 2014 SUPDET symposium.
The 2013 Ronald K. Mengel Award for outstanding detection paper is “Cooking Fire Prevention” by Robin Zevotek, James Milke and Thomas Fabian. Zevotek is a master’s student at University of Maryland; Milke is a professor and chair of the Dept. of Fire Protection Engineering at University of Maryland; Fabian is a fire research manager at Underwriters Laboratories Inc.
Ronald K. Mengel served for many years as the vice president of industry affairs of the system sensor division of Honeywell Corporation as part of his long and distinguished career in fire protection. He was instrumental in Honeywell’s efforts in industry-sponsored research and training. Mengel contributed to a number of Foundation projects and served on the Foundation’s Fire Detection and Alarm Research Advisory Council.
The 2013 William M. Carey Award for best suppression paper was awarded to Christopher Wieczorek, Benjamin Ditch and Tom Long for “Flammability Characterization of Li-ion Batteries in Bulk Storage.” Wieczorek is group manager fire protection at FM Global; Ditch is senior research engineer at FM Global; Long is a principal engineer and director of Exponent’s Maryland office.
William M. Carey, a former senior staff engineer at Underwriters Laboratories Inc., participated in many Foundation fire suppression projects, including the first National Quick Response Sprinkler Project. Throughout his career, he was often known for being "the bridge" between research and application of new fire safety knowledge.
About the Fire Protection Research Foundation
The Fire Protection Research Foundation plans, manages, and communicates research on a broad range of fire safety issues in collaboration with scientists and laboratories around the world. The Foundation is an affiliate of NFPA.
About the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA)
NFPA is a worldwide leader in fire, electrical, building, and life safety. The mission of the international nonprofit organization founded in 1896 is to reduce the worldwide burden of fire and other hazards on the quality of life by providing and advocating consensus codes and standards, research, training, and education. NFPA develops more than 300 codes and standards to minimize the possibility and effects of fire and other hazards. All NFPA codes and standards can be viewed at no cost at www.nfpa.org/freeaccess.
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