WUI FIRE Institute Faculty Receive an $879,411 Grant from the Moore Foundation

In November 2022, Cal Poly’s WUI FIRE Institute faculty won a four-year grant of $879,411 from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. The project, entitled “Increased Fire Resiliency at the Community Scale Through Planning and Fire Ignition Prevention,” is being led by Dr. Stewart Wilson in the Natural Resources Management and Environmental Sciences Department and Dr. William Siembieda in the City and Regional Planning Department. Dr. Wilson is leading a project on fire retardants. His team includes Dr. Richard Emberley from the Mechanical Engineering Department and the Fire Protection Engineering Program, Dr. Scott Steinmaus from the Plant Science Department, and Drs. Bwalya Malama and Chip Appel, both from the Natural Resources Management and Environmental Sciences Department. The goals of this project are to assess repeated applications of fire retardant to the soil, the groundwater, and the vegetation, and to assess their effectiveness in suppressing fire.

Thank you to Tim Northrop, Senior Director of Development in the College of Agriculture, Food, and Environmental Science, for his invaluable assistance.

For more information, please contact Dr. Wilson at swilso49@calpoly.edu or Dr. Siembieda at wsiembie@calpoly.edu.