Summary
Nick is a PhD Researcher in the Hazelab research group, supervised by Prof. Guillermo Rein. His research is focused around making communities under the danger of wildfire safer. His focus is on wildfire simulations, understanding how they work and using them to make safer communities.
He is currently working on k-PERIL, a stochastic trigger boundary model aimed at making evacuations because of wildfires safer. k-PERIL allows for better long term evacuation planning, as well as for evaluating the effect of evacuation improvement strategies, such as road resurfacings or forest thinning. More recently he has also started developing a fast smoke model to assess the visibility impact of wildfires on the evacuating population.
Hazelab believes in open access to science and active dissemination of results. To this end, Nick has been active in presenting his work in conferences and other media. Notable examples include presenting at the Leverhulme London Conference and submitting a short video to the Flashpoints 2021 competition.
Nick graduated from Imperial College London in 2021 with an MEng in Mechanical Engineering, with his thesis on wildfire simulations and the very first version of k-PERIL. During and after his studies he has also been working in teaching and industry. He currently teaches the 3rd year Chemical Engineering Mechanical Design project, which teaches students the principles of CAD design and engineering drawings. He is also a Teaching assistant for 1st and 2nd year Design and Manufacture, 2nd Year Thermofluids Labs, 1st year Mechatronics Labs, and 4th year CFD. He has worked externally as a design engineer in industry, working on rapid prototyping and mass production.
Visit his personal website to see more about his past experiences, industrial experience, outreach and science communication.