Shuna Ni Receives NSF CAREER Award

Shuna Ni is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award.

The U.S. National Science Foundation named Shuna Ni, an assistant professor in the Department of Fire Protection Engineering, a recipient of the Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Award.

“This project will help us better understand and model the complex interactions between structural collapse and fire behavior,” said Ni. “I am excited to combine experiments, modeling, and student training to advance safer and more resilient communities.”

Ni’s project will advance understanding of how structural collapse influences fire behavior in residential communities, particularly in wildfire-prone regions. At the single-building scale, collapse during fires alters fire behavior by changing compartmentation, ventilation, fuel distribution, flame-spread pathways, and ember generation, with effects pronounced in light-frame wood structures, the most common residential construction in the United States. At the neighborhood scale, collapse can cause direct flame contact by toppling burning structures onto adjacent ones, introducing fuel into the space between buildings, and increasing ember flux toward neighboring buildings, collectively leading to cascading fire spread in densely built areas. However, these interactions remain poorly understood and are rarely addressed in existing fire modeling tools.

This project will first address this critical gap through fire tests on light-frame wood residential buildings. The experimental data collected will support the development of a computational framework to incorporate structural collapse processes into fire simulations. Ultimately, this project aims to advance safer building design, improve neighborhood planning, and enhance firefighter safety.

The project will also integrate research with education by training students and engaging them in hands-on research and design activities, with research outcomes incorporated into coursework and design-based learning. These activities will equip students with practical skills in analyzing fire-induced collapse, collapse-induced fire behavior, and the design of fire-resilient structures and communities, thereby strengthening the future workforce in fire safety and structural engineering.

Published June 8, 2026