The 11th International Symposium of Fire Safety Science was held in Christchurch, New Zealand in the middle of February. Both PhD students and senior researchers represented the Department of Fire Safety Engineering. People from the department presented four papers and three posters during the five-day long symposium.

Three awards were given to people associated with the department. The industrial PhD students Frida Vermina Lundström and Franz Evergren got the The Sheldon Tieszen student award and Professor Patrick van Hees got the Mid-Career Researcher Award. Both awards were sponsored by the International FORUM of Fire Research Directors. 

Professor Patrick van Hees was elected as chairman of the International Society of Fire Safety Science (IAFSS) during the conference and he took over the position from Professor Bogdan Dlugogorski, Murdoch University Australia. Professor Ove Petterson was European Vice Chair 1985-1994 and Lund University has a long tradition of being involved in IAFSS, but this is the first time that the chairmanship is held by a person from Lund University.

The next International Symposium of Fire Safety Science will be held in Lund 2017. Professor Daniel Nilsson made an excellent presentation of the city of Lund and the venues where the next symposium is going to be held during the IAFSS general business meeting in Christchurch. We hope that we can deliver a just as well organised conference as the University of Canterbury did in Christchurch.

More information from the conference can be found on the IAFSS webpage and all the papers can be downloaded from the Fire Safety Science digital archive.