A strong background in heat transfer, fluid mechanics, and experimental or numerical techniques is expected. Full details on how to apply is here.
firelab.berkeley.edu/available-po.... Email Prof. Gollner with your interest before the deadline. Note very limited international funding is available

www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/...

Yes!!!!

It was still good to find we can make a big impact without moving homes (which we can't feasible do) - but it requires broad adoption across communities.

I think we have to be careful defining what the goal is: Is it preventing communities from burning down or improving the health of our forests (and air quality). Reducing fire intensity approaching communities & structures is also important, but very dependent on surrounding fuels and conditions

Great to see this important debate highlighted! Our new study might be relevant to the discussion
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
news.berkeley.edu/2025/08/28/c...

Congratulations, Dr. Tripp!

We do exactly that, Monte Carlo wildfire simulations that include structures. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Models can’t get too much nuance on construction technologies at the community level, but can look at different levels of mitigation.

And yes, we are working on this as well as several other important factors to nail down the best approaches to achieve risk reduction in communities. The modeling techniques were just published in the last year and we're using this simultaneously on several important problems! Open to discuss

The idea has merit and in principle I don't see why it shouldn't work, provided you actually have significantly more fire resistant construction that doesn't introduce new risks. Sizing is difficult to predict - embers go far so you need large widths & changes to interior too

I’ve used the domino analogy… Important to break the chain all over the place - dominos everywhere and flying embers, so mitigation must be community wide for greatest impact.

It’s also hard to nuance information with the… you treat chaparral different than a forest!

I think the messaging was just twisted. The point perhaps is large scale fuel mitigation isn’t going to prevent (most) of the destruction we’re seeing. Fuels including vegetation, homes, etc in communities drives a lot of destruction. Fuel management CLOSE to communities is important.

Hollywood Blvd is now in a mandatory evacuation zone for the #Sunset fire.

It's gridlock.

The weird thing is wildfire is the only “preventable” natural disaster, in that we don’t just harden buildings against exposure, we can literally move the fuel away from structures to protect them. Fires will always happen in the wild but we COULD stop them from becoming disasters.