Three Sponsors Supporting New Fire Research Lab
To be built at the famed Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Mass., the facility is expected to house a variety of activities related to combustion and explosion, fire suppression, and materials.
Honeywell Life Safety, Chicago-based Rolf Jensen & Associates, and Schirmer Engineering are the sponsors of the WPI Fire Protection Engineering Lab, a facility still in the conceptual phase that soon will house R&D activities related to combustion and explosion, fire suppression, and materials, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) announced recently.
The sponsoring organizations were recognized Sept. 23 at an event celebrating WPI's Fire Protection Engineering program. The Honeywell Life Safety Fundamentals Lab will be built to support the education and research work of the Program.
"Worcester Polytechnic Institute has been a great contributor to the fire protection industry, and Honeywell certainly wants to help further this mission," said Mark Levy, president of Honeywell Life Safety. "We're going to provide our most advanced fire alarm systems and firefighter protective gear for this new lab to ensure the school continues its groundbreaking work."
"We are extremely grateful for Honeywell's commitment to WPI's fire protection engineering initiatives," said WPI Professor and Fire Protection Engineering Department Head Kathy Ann Notarianni. "Honeywell is a dedicated industry leader and partner in advancing education and research to benefit all those involved in fire safety."
The Sept. 23 program honored Raymond Friedman, a pioneer in fire protection engineering and author of "Principles of Fire Protection Chemistry and Physics," and also Duane Pearsall, inventor of the battery-powered home smoke detector, who died in April 2010. Pearsall was a WPI Presidential Medal and honorary degree recipient.
WPI offered the first U.S. master's degree program in fire engineering, began the first graduate-level program in fire protection engineering via distance learning in 1993, and grants the world's only formal Ph.D. program in fire protection engineering.