The SFPE Foundation has announced the seven recipients of its 2026 Fire Safety Awards, recognizing researchers and students whose work is advancing fire protection engineering, fire safety science, wildfire resilience, evacuation behavior and fire investigation.
Professor Beth Weckman, P.Eng., of the University of Waterloo in Canada, received the Arthur B. Guise Medal, the foundation’s most prestigious research award. The medal recognizes eminent achievement in advancing the science and technology of fire protection engineering. Weckman, who recently retired as a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, has spent decades advancing fire safety science through research into fire dynamics, pool fires, hot surface ignition and diagnostic techniques.
Jason Floyd, Ph.D., FSFPE, and Jonathan Hodges, Ph.D., both of UL Research Institutes’ Fire Safety Research Institute in the United States, received the Jack Bono Award for Engineering Communication. The award recognized their Fire Technology article, “An Approach for Flux and Thickness Scaling of Cone Calorimeter Data for Predicting the Pyrolysis of Materials.”
Gülşah Ataş, a Ph.D. candidate at RMIT University in Australia, received the Dr. Guylène Proulx, OC Scholarship for research into human behavior in fire. Her work uses immersive virtual reality driving simulations to study real-time evacuation decision-making during vehicle-based bushfire scenarios, combining behavioral, physiological and cognitive data.
Tadele Mekuriaw Getu, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Civil Engineering at Queen’s University in Canada, received a Student Scholar Award for research focused on housing vulnerability during wildfire events in a First Nations community. His project aims to identify key vulnerability factors, classify housing units and compare those classifications with observed wildfire damage.
Maria Binte Mannan, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maryland in the United States, also received a Student Scholar Award. Her research focuses on quantitative, physics-based fire investigation methods designed to reduce subjectivity in determining fire origin, spread and severity.
Mahadev “Dev” Rokade, a Ph.D. student at the Edinburgh Fire Research Centre in the University of Edinburgh’s School of Engineering, received the Frederick W. Mowrer Global Scholar Award. His research examines the behavior of sustainable concrete under realistic fire exposure, including thermo-mechanical response, cooling-phase damage and implications for performance-based fire engineering.
“The SFPE Foundation is proud to recognize the 2026 SFPE Foundation award recipients,” said Leslie Marshall, Ph.D., executive director of the SFPE Foundation. “The recipients’ work exemplifies the scientific excellence and dedication that continue to advance the fire protection and fire safety profession. From pioneering research that expands our understanding of fire dynamics and human behavior to the next generation of fire safety solutions, we are honored to celebrate their achievements and are grateful to the donors whose support makes these awards possible.”
The Fire Safety Awards will be presented during the SFPE Annual Conference & Expo in Atlanta, Georgia, from October 6-8, 2026. Presenters will include Sean Donohue, chair of the SFPE Foundation Awards Committee; Peter Senez, chair of the SFPE Foundation Board of Governors; and Maria B. Marks, vice chair of the SFPE Foundation Board of Governors. Registration is available at sfpe.org/annual26, and nominations for the foundation’s 2027 awards are expected to open in early 2027.
