• Home
• Newsletter
• Training
• Sprinklers
• Flashover
• Turnout Gear
• Hose Streams
• PPV
• PASS Devices
• Structural Collapse
• Fire Investigation
• Thermal Imaging
• FF Locator
• Wind Driven Fires
• NIST FFT Group
• Available CD/DVDs

Contact us:  webmaster@fire.gov

FFTG Staff

Nelson Bryner

Chemical Engineer
FFTG Group Leader
nbryner@nist.gov
(301) 975-6868

Mr. Bryner leads the Fire Fighting Technology Group which conducts research on projects designed to improve the safety and effectiveness of fire fighters.  Current research projects include: 1) Fire Fighter Locating/Tracking Systems, 2) Hose Stream Effectiveness Study,  3) Positive Pressure Ventilation Technique and Modelling­,  4) Fire Fighter Protective Clothing Performance Model, 5) Performance of Thermal Imagers, and 6) Reconstruction of Multiple Fatality Fires.  Mr. Bryner is currently involved in projects to enhance PASS device capability, to characterize thermal imagers/infrared cameras, improve fire fighter visibility, self-contained fire fighter data systems, to develop structural collapse prediction tools, and to incorporate physiological monitors (heart rate, EKG, blood pressure, & core temperature) into fire fighter garments.    Improving fire fighter visibility involves helmet based systems which locate other instrumented helmets and provide visual (high intensity LEDs) as well as audible (helmet talks) cues to the fire fighters.

In addition, Mr. Bryner is scientific officer on Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) contracts on instrumentation to predict structural collapse, ultrasonic fire fighter tracking tools, and distributed multimodal data and voice communication systems.  Mr. Bryner’s group participated in the investigation of The Collapse of the World Trade Centers and he is a member of the National Construction Safety Team that examined The Station Nightclub Fire. 

Mr. Bryner’s formal training is as a chemical engineer (BS & MS in Chemical Engineering from University of Maryland), but for more than 20 years he has been burning various objects and structures at the Building and Fire Research Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland.   Mr. Bryner has published over 65 papers and reports.  He is a member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, National Fire Protection Association, ASTM, American Chemical Society, Sigma Xi, Tau Beta Pi (National Engineering), and Omega Chi Epsilon (Chemical Engineering).