REAX ENGINEERING - Key Persons
David Rich has a PhD in Fire Science with an emphasis in fire testing and fire behavior analysis. He is a former Rescue Captain with the San Francisco Fire Department with certifications in Hazardous Materials First Responder and DHS Disaster Management. He is a lecturer in UC Berkeley's Department of Mechanical Engineering and has taught Fire Test Methods in Cal Poly San Luis Obispo's graduate program in Fire Protection Engineering. He is a fire expert with 12 years of experience participating in investigations, conducting reconstructions, and providing forensic scientific testing and support for determination of cause and origin.
Dr. Samuel L. Manzello joins the team at Reax Engineering after an extensive career in the US Government. Over the span of his two decades career at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, part of the US Department of Commerce, Samuel's expertise may be best described as bringing fundamental combustion knowledge to practical problems.
His research in droplet-surface interaction was featured in the journal Nature and his firebrand research was featured in the journal Science.
Samuel has received many awards including a NASA Graduate Student Researcher Fellowship (NASA-GSRP), a National Research Council Post-Doctoral Fellowship (NRC), a fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), a NIST Individual Bronze Medal, NIST Engineering Laboratory (EL) Awards for best paper and Outstanding Communicator, the 2015 Harry C. Biggelstone Award from NFPA, the 2016 Tibor Z. Harmathy Award from Springer Nature, the 2016 and 2020 Best Journal Paper Award from the Combustion Society of Japan, and the 2017 Samuel Wesley Stratton Award as an individual from NIST, NIST's highest award for fundamental research.
Samuel's research is published in more than 90 journal articles, across some 25 different journals focused on heat and mass transfer, combustion, and fluid dynamics.
As a world renown expert in wildland-urban interface (WUI) fires, he was an invited speaker and panelist at The Chemistry of Urban Wildfires - A Virtual Information-Gathering Workshop hosted by National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine in 2021, the 11 th International Association for Fire Safety Science Symposium in 2014, and the 9th Asia-Oceania Symposium on Fire Science and Technology Symposium in 2012.
He has served as Guest Editor for Fire Technology, Fire Safety Journal, Combustion Science and Technology, Frontiers in Mechanical Engineering, and is currently Associate Editor of Fire Technology.
Additional service includes colloquium co-chair for Fire Research at the 37 th, 38 th, and 39 th International Combustion Symposium, convener of ISO TC92/WG14 (Large Outdoor Fires and the Built Environment), and co-leader of the IAFSS permanent working group LOF&BE (Large Outdoor Fires and the Built Environment). At the invitation of Springer Nature, he served as Editor in Chief on the first comprehensive encyclopedia on wildland fires and wildland-urban interface (WUI) fires.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Building and Fire Code Consulting
Jeff Gonzales is an associate for Reax Engineering Inc. in Berkeley, CA. He specializes in lithium-ion battery safety, nuclear facility fire safety, and hazardous materials consulting. He previously served as the fire safety engineer for battery cell manufacturing processes at Rivian Automotive and has performed engineering work for the Department of Energy at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Air Force Global Strike Command at Kirtland Air Force Base. He received his Master's Degree in Fire Protection Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute where he successfully developed a novel automation algorithm for optimizing smoke control systems in high-rise buildings.
Job Titles:
- Building & Fire Code Consulting