James A. Ierardi

Educational Background

Research Interests

• Computer simulation of fire phenomena
• Computational Fluid Dynamics
• Fire forensics
• Smoke detector response modeling

About James Ierardi

Mr. Ierardi is completing his Ph.D. in Fire Protection Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s Center for Firesafety Studies and will be a Fire Protection Engineer for the Boston-based consulting firm R.W. Sullivan, Inc. He holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and an M.S. in Fire Protection Engineering from WPI. As an undergraduate Mr. Ierardi was cited for many academic achievements and graduated with High Distinction. However, his enthusiasm for the field does not come through in academics only. As a graduate student Mr. Ierardi has served three terms as the President of WPI’s Student Chapter of SFPE, one term as Vice-President and one term as President for the Salamander Fire Protection Engineering Honorary Society, and two terms as the Fire Protection Engineering department representative to WPI’s Graduate Student Organization.

Mr. Ierardi’s experience as a graduate student research assistant includes two years with A Computer Model of Heat Flux and Fluid Flow from Engine to Passenger Compartments in Post-Collision Vehicles (General Motors Research Corporation pursuant to the GM/DOT settlement agreement), two years with Development of a Virtual Reality-Based Fire Fighter Training System (Creative Optics, Inc.), and two years with Characterizing the Entry Resistance of Smoke Detectors (Hughes Associates, Inc., NIST Building and Fire Research Laboratory Student Grant #70NANBOH0023, System Sensor/Notifier). He has also spent two weeks as a guest researcher at NIST testing smoke detectors in the Fire Emulator/Detector Evaluator under the supervision of Mr. Richard Bukowski and Mr. Tom Cleary.

Mr. Ierardi has given individual lectures on the following topics for WPI’s fire protection engineering graduate courses; Vehicle Fires (Failure Analysis), Computer Fire Modeling: State of the Art (Building Firesafety I), Smoke Detection (Building Firesafety I), and Performance-Based Design of an Atrium (Building Firesafety II). In addition, he will be the instructor for Fundamentals of Fire Safety Analysis, an undergraduate course at WPI, in the Spring of 2002. He has served as a co-advisor for Major Qualifying Project (MQP) groups examining CFD Modeling of Post-Flashover Compartments and Effect of Smoke Detector Orientation on Response Time.

Mr. Ierardi has worked on several litigation matters in the past five years as an assistant to Prof. Jonathan Barnett for both civil and criminal cases involving fire growth and development. The work has included computer simulation of fire growth, site visits, evidence inspections, demonstrative laboratory experiments, literature research, and the creation of fire development time lines based on available evidence from testimony, documentation, simulations, and experiments. He has also co-taught a three-day course on Zone Fire Modeling with Prof. Jonathan Barnett to the engineering staff of a nuclear power facility in Baton Rogue, LA.

Mr. Ierardi also developed and maintains FireTools, a collection of web-based calculation tools for fire protection engineering, on his personal website (www.wpi.edu/~ierardi/FireTools/) that has been recognized by the International Association of Fire Safety Science’s Educational Subcommittee as being “a good example of how students at different universities can help each other.”