Albert Simeoni is a French fire-safety engineer and academic whose research explores the behaviour of wildland and wildlandâÂÂurban interface fires. He is professor and head of the Department of Fire Protection Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, United States.
Simeoni read physics at the University of Corsica, graduating with a Licence (BSc) in 1994. He completed an MEng in thermal transfers at Polytech Marseille in 1996 before returning to Corsica for doctoral work. His PhD thesis (2000) developed multiphase models to improve predictions of forest-fire spread.
After earning his doctorate, Simeoni was appointed maître de conférences (assistant professor) at the University of Corsica, where he led a CNRS-affiliated research group on forest-fire modelling.
In 2013, he moved to the United Kingdom to take up the BRE Chair of Fire Safety Engineering at the University of Edinburgh, a post he held until 2015. Simeoni joined WPI in 2017 and became department head the same year. Beyond the university sector, he serves as treasurer (board member since 2014) of the International Association of Wildland Fire (IAWF).
SimeoniâÂÂs work combines laboratory and field experiments with computational fluid-dynamics models to examine flame spread, firebrand generation and coupled fireâÂÂatmosphere interactions. His recent projects include establishing a National Science Foundation Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center at WPI, and developing physics-based tools for assessing extreme fire behaviour.