On 27^th September, Elijah Igweh took part in the graduation ceremony of the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture at Ghent University, officially completing his International Master of Fire Safety Engineering (IMFSE) degree.

For his outstanding master’s thesis, “Heat Flux Measurement using Color Ratio Pyrometry”, supervised by Prof. Peter Sunderland and Prof. Stanislav Stoliarov (University of Maryland) and Prof Bart Merci (Ghent University), Elijah was honored as the very first recipient of the Xavier Deckers Award.

This award is a tribute to the lasting dedication and passion for fire safety engineering and the IMFSE program demonstrated by Xavier Deckers, who sadly passed away last year. The award was handed over by Xavier’s family, who shared his vision and enthusiasm with Elijah.

On September 1st, Elijah joined the FRISSBE team and the Slovenian National Building and Civil Engineering Institute (ZAG). He is enrolling as a PhD student at Ghent University with Prof Bart Merci as the main supervisor, and Dr Andrea Lucherini and Prof Grunde Jomaas as co-supervisors. His PhD is funded from the FRISSBE project and ZAG.