Arnaud Trouve to Lead FPE

On July 30, 2023, Arnaud Trouvé, professor and graduate director of the University of Maryland (UMD) Department of Fire Protection Engineering (FPE), will take over as FPE’s Department Chair.

"Over the past three decades, the FPE Department has earned a reputation of excellence, not only in the education of fire protection engineers, but also in the advancement of fire science," said Trouvé. "Under Jim Milke’s leadership, the Department played a prominent role, both in the FPE profession and in the fire research community. I intend to carry forward Jim’s vision and to renew the commitment of the Department to the practice and to the science." He added, "We have exciting new challenges ahead, for instance, the development of an online delivery of our undergraduate B.S. program, and also the adaptation of our teaching portfolio and research capabilities to new problems (fire safety at the wildland urban interface, fire safety in Li-ion battery systems, fire safety in mass timber buildings, etc) and to new technologies (Artificial Intelligence and machine learning algorithms, a new generation of fire sensors, Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Virtual Reality, etc). Meeting these challenges will require the help of the entire FPE community and I look forward to working with our vast network of alumni and friends to write this new chapter of the Department.”

Trouvé joined the FPE faculty in 2001. Since then, his commitment to teaching and research excellence, energy for expanding the department, and focus on student success have played a major role in growing the strong international reputation of the department.

Arnaud Trouvé is an internationally recognized expert in fire dynamics. Over the years, he has served on the editorial boards of the Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, Progress in Energy and Combustion Science, Combustion and Flame, and Fire Technology; he currently serves on the editorial boards of Combustion Theory and Modelling and the Fire Safety Journal. Trouvé has organized several regional, national, and international meetings at UMD, including the Fall Technical Meeting of the U.S. Eastern States Section of the Combustion Institute (ESSCI) in 2009, the 10th Symposium of the International Association for Fire Safety Science (IAFSS) in 2011, and the 10th U.S. National Combustion Meeting in 2017. He is also a past chair of the ESSCI and a past executive board member of the IAFSS. As further demonstration of his dedication to advancing the fire research community, Trouvé co-leads the IAFSS Working Group on Measurement and Computation of Fire Phenomena (the MaCFP Working Group) and chairs a network of leading higher education institutions and research laboratories in fire safety engineering called the International Fire Safety Consortium.

Trouvé earned his Engineering Degree and M.S. from the École Centrale of Paris, France, in 1985 and his Ph.D. from the same institution in 1989. His research interests include fire modeling and Computational Fluid Dynamics, application of data assimilation to fire and combustion, and the physical modeling of combustion- and fire-related phenomena, including compartment fires, wildland fires and explosions. Trouvé is a fellow of the Combustion Institute and the recipient of the 2017 FORUM Sjölin Award, which recognizes "an outstanding contribution to the science of fire safety, or an advance in the state of the art in fire safety engineering."

We whole-heartedly welcome Dr. Trouvé to his new role as chair and look forward to the possibilities his experience and expertise will create.

Published May 19, 2023