Elijah Igweh has been officially enrolled at Ghent University (Belgium) and will start his PhD in Fire Safety Engineering on December 1^st, 2025. His research will be supervised by Prof Bart Merci (Ghent University) who recently co-received a prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Synergy Grant for the “FireSpace” project, pioneering research on the dynamics of fire in space environments (read more here). Dr Andrea Lucherini (FRISSBE, ZAG) will act as co-supervisor.

The FRISSBE team at ZAG is again honoured to collaborate with Ghent University and Prof Bart Merci, who now supervises two PhD researchers within the FRISSBE team, Elijah Igweh and Martin Veit. This PhD collaboration further strengthens the partnership between Ghent University and ZAG-FRISSBE, building on several ongoing joint activities such as:

1. ZAG is an affiliate partner of the International Master of Science in Fire Safety Engineering (IMFSE) program, from which Elijah recently graduated.
2. Dr Andrea Lucherini teaches in the course “Material Behaviour at Ambient and Elevated Temperatures” for IMFSE students as an external collaborator.
3. A joint research project focused on CFD predictions of flashover fire dynamics in compartments, in collaboration with the Fire Safety Research Institute of Underwriters Laboratories Inc.
4. Researchers from Ghent University participate in the European Space Agency (ESA) Topical Team on Spacecraft Fire Safety, led by Dr Ulises Rojas-Alva and Prof Grunde Jomaas from ZAG-FRISSBE.

Welcome, Elijah!