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Apr 20, 2020

Rino is a senior lecturer at Massey University in New Zealand. Rino has a bachelor's, master's and Ph.D. in civil engineering with a specialty in evacuation modeling and human behavior in fire. On this episode of Fire Code Tech, we talk about emerging
technologies and their impact on fire protection research. Rino has been published in more than 20 scholarly journals. If you want see Rino's speech at NIST or any of his other content, you can find him at http://www.lovreglio.info/.

Tell me about your background in fire protection?
What are you currently in the process of researching / what is your research specialty?
What is preevacuation time and can you explain your research around that?
What is virtual reality and augmented reality and what implication do they have in fire protection?
Tell me about your experience with BIM modeling?
Can you tell me about the research process from begining to end?
How does one go about being published in a scholarly journal?
Can you take me through your day as a researcher and as a professor?
What piece of advice do you have for individuals getting into fire protection?
What degree program are you involved in at Massey University?
Tell me a little bit more about your speach for NIST?

 

Transcription

Hello, all welcome to the show. I'm Gus Gagliardi, and this is fire code tech on fire code tech. We interview fire protection professionals from all different careers and backgrounds in order to provide insight and a resource for those in the field. My goal is to help you become a more informed fire protection.

Professional fire code tech has interviews with engineers and researchers, fire marshals, and insurance professionals, and highlights topics like codes and standards, engineering systems, professional development, and trending topics in the industry. So if you're someone who wants to know more about fire protection or the fascinating stories of those who are in the.

You're in the right place. Welcome to episode two of fire code tech. Today we have Jiro LA Reio, but he goes by Reno. For short Reno is a lecture at Massey university in New Zealand. He has a PhD in civil engineering, within emphasis in human behavior and fire and egress modeling. On episode two of fire code tech, we get into what it means to be a researcher and the researching process.

Also, we talk about being published in a scholarly journal. And what it takes to be a part of this collaborative process. Reno has been published in more than 20 scholarly articles. Reno's research takes him to the intersection of new technology and fire protection. Some of the technology Reno uses for the advancement of his research is virtual reality, augmented reality and machine learning.

We talk about what it means to BIM model and some other really fascinating simulation programs. Don't forget to follow fire code tech on social media and subscribe. So you never miss an episode. Let's get started with a show. Well, hello, Reno. What's going on today? Thank you for inviting me. Everything's good from DC.

We have a wonderful day. That's awesome. So what are you doing in DC? I know that you're a professor at the Massey university college. I am here visiting N the, especially the far division, because I work with them on, uh, research. Focusing on wildfire is research is, uh, led here by Dr. Erica Kowski and yes, my university mass university allowed me to.

Do this visiting and would like also to thanks my, my department, the school of built environment for make this possible and has been exciting, uh, adventure in the last two months, because we have done so many cool things with the new, fresh data from wildfire research. And it's kind of hot topic, as you can imagine.

Definitely. I, uh, I can imagine that it's probably, uh, never been, uh, more. Uh, impactful time to be involved with wildfire research with all of the, uh, rampant fires, uh, going on, um, in Australia, it's been a, a big topic for global news. I imagine that's given a lot of fuel to the, uh, proverbial fire, uh, the people who are researching and studying about that.

No, it's really interesting. And we are so excited to publish as soon as possible. The funding that we got. We believe that we can do, we can give a really great impact on society. And that's the exciting part of our research is really applied and can be used quite easily by everyone around the world.

That's great. Well, tell me a little bit about your background for the people who don't know, um, maybe a little bit about your education or your upgrade or upbringing, so people can get a little idea about you and about, uh, how you got. Into fire protection. I started studying, uh, more than 10 year university studies more than 10 years ago might say also more than 10 kilograms ago.

And, and I start as a civil engineer. I knew that my soul was an engineering, so, and so I managed to get to university. I was the first in my family to go to univers. And a bit by curiosity and by chance, I end up doing, uh, a degree in civil engineer engineering as a undergrad. And then I decided to do also master focusing more on structural engineering.

But then towards the end of, uh, of the degree, I realized that all the mathematics stuff was cool, but I didn't really want to do the job in my life. And then they had the chance. To attend a couple seminars, one, it was done my ex supervisor, Dr. That is in Sweden now alone university. And he was talking about foreign engineering modeling and it was like thinking that's so, so I decided that, uh, I asked him if there was any chance to do my master thesis on this topic.

And then we managed to work together on this topic. And then, uh, this research. Bigger and bigger in terms of my master thesis. I had many other professor involved professor lawyer from Spain, professor D professor co from Polytech. So it was a really exciting time during my master. And when I finish it, I had a scholarship at, uh, my home university.

Polytechnical. And that was my kicking start officially to do serious research in fire engineering, focusing mainly on, uh, Eva bodily. And since 2012, I've been doing that as part of my life. That's really exciting. That's that's, uh, it's interesting to hear you talk about, um, how, uh, you started out in civil engineering and, you know, have transitioned into more of a, uh, evacuation or fire protection engineering role.

Um, is I just wanted to ask in the us it's, it's common. It's very common for other. Engineering disciplines to filter into the fire protection engineering field. But, uh, usually they go from a discipline, like, uh, mechanical or, uh, maybe sometimes electrical only rarely have I, uh, seen people come from a civil background.

Is that, is that more common in other parts of the. From my experience. Uh, there are a lot of people like I'm working Zealand, and I can tell you I've been talking and meeting with a lot of people, uh, that work in the field. And I can say that there is a lot of people from structural background background that they swap on this field kind, help quite a lot.

To spread the news that, Hey, there is also this field among my students, because it's a really exciting topic. I might say that in Italy, it's reasonable that someone with a sibling background start doing something like that, but there is also mixture of, uh, people from mechanic engineering because there is, as you might know, there is a lot of, uh, computational Floyd dynamics.

And there are a lot of people in mechanic engineering that can give a lot and apply a lot. Intuitively, it kind of makes sense that most engineering disciplines, I mean, if you're in some sort of engineering, you could make your transition into fire protection. And, but, uh, yeah, I was just kind of interested about that.

So if you talked a couple times about research, um, will you talk more specifically on some of the, some of your interests in research and some of the topics that you. Are currently in the process of reach researching, of course, focus. My research is try to understand how people behave during emergency.

And I started my research focusing on, uh, fire buildings and, uh, something that is really exciting for me is try to understand what are the factor affecting the decision of people to, uh, for instance, to start evacuating, to choose between different evacuation route. And, uh, actually make choice about how they moving the space and how they interact with the space.

I've been really lucky because I'm playing with this kind research. Quite a lot for me is really a game, my work. And I've been trying to make this investigation and using, uh, drills video using, uh, new technology, like virtual reality technology, augmented reality in which you can expose people to. Or simulated emergency and try to understand how they will behave.

And it's really exciting because you can do so many variation of the emergency and try to understand why people make such a decision. And I believe that this new technology have a really huge potential for training purposes. Because you can use the virtual experience to teach people what's the best things to do in case of emergency.

And for instance, last year, we did a really exciting study showing that, uh, doing training with virtual reality, especially for, for extinguishing is much more strong in terms of retaining information compared with the traditional videos. So we. I'm promoting quite a lot of this new technology, because I see a lot of potential for them.

That's really neat. Uh, you touched on a, a couple topics there that I'd like to go a little bit more in depth on, but, um, yeah, I'd read a couple of your, um, research articles and, oh, it seems like more than a couple of them talked about, uh, pre evacuation, uh, movement or factors contributing to pre evacuation.

So I think that's really interesting. In my schooling experience, we had a life safety class and, um, in one of the classes, we had a voice evacuation drill where our teacher would read off a set of instructions and then record how we exited the building. By using Cardinal directions to, it was interesting because everybody, you know, took their own, um, path out of the building.

And yeah, I just, that's my experience with Pree evacuation and egress modeling a little bit, but yeah, I just wanted you to speak. A little bit more maybe on pre evacuation and some of the factors that are involved with that. Cuz I know that you've spent some time there been one of the, uh, most exciting part of my research on, uh, pre, uh, study.

And I started when I was in Sweden, working with my ex supervisor Ronk and uh, professor Daniel Nielsen. I say that we are lucky because we have been stealing Daniel Nielson from Sweden. Now we have 18 New Zealand, so it's much easier to do research with him. and, uh, we, we started doing research there because they managed to collect data 20 years ago.

And, uh, I was really fascinating. Wow. To have the possibility to work with this data from, uh, evacuation drills in a cinema. It's exciting because you can see that the, that stage is really characterized by uncertainty. Cause people don't have information, they don't have a clue about what is going on. So you see that when they start getting information, this can be done using alarms of, uh, through social interaction.

They understand that there is something going on. You can see that, or they can shift from, uh, their normal state. That is the state. Before there is an emergency to their pre equation St. Which they try to understand what's going on. Then they make the decision that, okay, it's time to get up of here. And then eventually they prepare themselves and then start to move finally, towards the safe exit at the, we can say, this is the end of the provocation time.

And then they start moving towards the, towards a safe place that can be outside the building or inside the building. Depends on what's the strategy. And for me, it was really exciting because we can use a lot of modeling tools, traditional modeling tools to investigate the weight of environmental on the decision making process.

And just lately we have been doing, uh, really exciting, uh, research using even machine learning. And this is a research that we have started with, uh, uh, uh, Dr. Colleague of mine, Dr. Z from university of Florida. And we tried to use the same dataset and see how much can we get things better with machine learning?

How much can we learn better using this new mining data mining technology? So it's still an open question for me and I'm trying to use. New technology, new stats, new tools to dig deeper and deeper and even doing new drills through mass university had the possibility to do really amazing equation drills in which we had the chance to investigate equation pre equation behavior in our mass library or many other retirement homes in Zealand.

So it's something that is growing. I just need to find time to sleep less and write more about it. I hear you, man. That's exciting. It sounds like you are really into the cutting edge of technology. It's you know, you've, you've hit a lot of. Big terms. And I, you know, from reading your research a little bit, I can tell that, you know, you're into big data machine learning, you know, VR, AR BIM, just to transition a little bit, you spoke a little bit earlier about virtual reality and augmented reality.

What kind of. Applications do those have for egress modeling and, you know, I, I know you've already talked about a little bit how they are effective in drills and how they, um, are really effective modeling, uh, techniques, but yeah. Will you speak a little bit more on, you know, what is VR and AR. Perfect now virtual reality.

The difference virtual reality is when we have a complete immersion in a digital world, we can have a not immersive virtual reality. And that's what we display on a screen. Basically, when we play any video game, we have experience of non immersive virtual reality. Instead when we put those fancy goggles and we get part of the game.

Immers in the game, we have the so-called immersive virtual reality instead of augmented reality is the visualization of digital content in the real space. And the easiest way to explain that is to think about holograms around us. One of the easiest example is Pokemon go in which we have Pokemon bouncing around our.

Or even the reversing camera of your car, if you think is a perfect example of, uh, augmented reality, because generally you have the visualization of digital lines that help you to make your own decision. So it's a technology that has been there for a while, and it's really interesting to use this technology for equation risk, because we can use virtual reality to test different things.

We can, for instance, test, if they have equation sites, we put in a. Actually are perceived by people and well understood by people and then eventually fulfill their proposal. So we can make a lot of investigation to find out which combination of vocation signs are the best to guide people in a building.

We can use, uh, virtual reality also to investigate human behavior. Try to understand how people make decision or they get out a building or from a tunnel. Even more, we can use virtual reality to train people so we can give them a package in which they try, uh, software simulation, which they try to use patients system like, uh, for extinguisher.

And they learn through the process by doing mistakes. And I can tell you. These information, they get really stuck on the demand mind of, uh, of the people that do the train. So there is a lot of potential potentiality for virtual reality. It's also good to let people that dunno anything about equation, to be part of the equation and show simulation.

Of what will happen if there is an emergency in a building, so you can emerge them in the emergency and show them the results of patient simulation run with a computer. Augmented reality is pretty much helping in the same way can be used basically in all the fields. And we have been doing a bit of lit review about what has been done so far.

This is the work that I've done with colleague from the center.

I don't remember the name of government organization of Canada for research. Sorry. And, uh, we have been, uh, doing research, a leader to review and try to understand, uh, what are the application. Augmented reality for equation, uh, proposes. And this research hopefully is gonna be out soon showing all the potential of this new emerging technology.

That's really interesting. Yeah. I, I've definitely thought of Pokemon go as augmented reality in some other games as augmented reality, but I've never thought of, you know, the lines on your backup camera, I guess that is augmented reality. Those lines are not physical. It's just a projection onto, you know, What is actually there.

Yeah. So I think that's a, a key factor. And you know, we're talking about VR and AR you know, virtual realities, that's a full computer, full digital experience. And that augmented reality is kind of that pseudo. Full digital, you know, you're one foot in the virtual world and one foot out. So I think that's really interesting and I definitely see a lot of promise in that area.

And, you know, in the next 10 years, I can only imagine what we're gonna be able to do with that technology it's it's in its infancy, for sure. Um, so that's really interest. I wanted you to speak for just a moment on BIM BIM content or, you know, I see that, uh, one of your classes that you've taught or maybe that you're still teaching is a BIM class at Massey university.

Could you just speak a little bit on, uh, BIM and, and your stance on BIM and what BIM is and that sort of. BM stand for building information modeling. And if you Google it, there are many definition about what ism and if it's it's 3d. So in short terms, short definition, I can say that is, uh, database building database with all the information that you can have about that building.

So not just about the information about. The number of door, what's the furniture that you get in that or many beams, but also the information about when those elements will get in place. And what's the cost of those elements and what's their life, uh, time of these elements in the building. Also all these information, there are connected with a visual.

The model that allow you to investigate from a 3d point of view, all this information. Uh, people talk about BIM in terms of a pro process, because if you start sharing information such a, a new way, you can, uh, modify all the way we run. Construction, uh, work in of programming in of, uh, uh, cost estimation.

And that's why I'm teaching this in degree at university in construction tool that. Can make a big difference in, uh, in the process of, uh, construction, simplify things, reducing a clutch that reducing clashes, reducing, uh, error, reducing redoing, and so killing the costs and improving the quality of the built environments.

Definitely. I totally agree with you. Uh, yeah, my, uh, I've had my experience with BIM is that it's excellent for coordination. You know, I have, I have experience with Revit, which is, uh, it's a big, um, BIM tool and yeah, I like what you said about, you know, it's not just that it's a door, but it's more information about the door.

How much does it cost? You know, what is the maintenance items with the door? You know, coordinating the door with the architectural features, all of these. Pieces that play into each other. BIM is not just, you know, the door or the light switch or the wall. It's all of the things that connect with that. The potential is great because also for management of the building, in terms of facility management, the building model that then we kinda swap the name in a set information model is a key.

Set of information. If we want to maintain a building and if we want to make a change in the future of the building, and even at some point, when we want to demolish the building, we can have enough information to do those process in a really effective way. The important things, the same is to maintain the, maintain the information.

Whenever there is a change in the real building we need. Make this change also in, in our data set, we start in fact calling. We are, so if we push this so much, we can call it digital twin and we can start using this digital twin to do a lot of accurate assessment about what is gonna happen. I see what you're saying.

Yeah. And that's a constant struggle with the building owner, um, is keeping the model up to date. You know, oftentimes you'll get a set of drawings from a building that was constructed, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50, you know, 80 years ago. And the as-built drawings are from the initial construction and, you know, You or don't have reliable information about what the existing state of the building is.

So that updating the building, uh, model and just having that, I like that I've never heard that term before digital twin. I think that's interesting. About how you can have a mere image effectively of a building's content and how that helps with maintenance and just, yeah. All, all through the life cycle of the building, from the construction to the maintenance, to the demolition.

That's my goal. PIDE work in terms of my teaching. Try to convince my student first and push them to convince their employer. That that's the future. I believe it. Yeah, it's, it's remarkable that, you know, even in the short span of my career, I've seen the industry, the construction industry lean into BIM and you know, more 3d coordination.

And so I think that that's infinitely interesting and it's the inevitable direction of the field. So I, I think that's great for somebody that's not. Um, involved in research or scientific study, will you explain like the workflow of research or, you know, how do you go from an idea of a topic all the way into, you know, formulating a research plan and you know, or, you know, how does it, how does it get from step one to, you know, publishing.

This process is, uh, really changed depending on the level of your career. Let's get to the case in which you're a PhD student, and you're just a beginner with a research topic. Generally, you have a broad. Thinking about, I want to investigate the field and then you start scoping down about what you really want to investigate and the best way to have an understanding about what is going on.

And what has been done so far is to do a comprehensive to review. So generally this is always one of the first step in a research, unless you are already an expert in the field. So, you know, Because you've been reading the last 10 years, what is has been done. So if you're beginning, that's the best way.

Read, read, read, try to understand what has been done. Try to understand what has been the advantage of new approaches, this advantage of these new things, and try to identify the called research gap. That means that there are space in which we don't really know what is going on. We don't really have hands.

Or we know in certain condition. So we, we won't understand much more about that. And whenever you are cap to identify the research, that's the starting point, build your work. And most of the time we try to bring light, collecting new data or developing new experiment that give us the inform. That we want, and then do a bit of analysis about the data we collect and finally provide an answer.

That's the exciting part then for me, the boring part is to write what you, and this is the tedious part of my students write down. They are really scared of writing report or journal article because it's, if you think. Explaining in a really clean and, uh, simple way what you have done to everyone else seems easy, but it's not that easy.

In fact, writing the first half, it might take even couple of weeks, three weeks, a full months, and then. You ask all the collaborator to read it. You see that among all the people that have been involved already in the research to read it. And they start saying, you know, don't really understand what you're trying.

So it's really exciting to see that writing is really challenging, but of course, then you get used to it and you stopped getting better and better. But, uh, when you are a PhD student, and I might say that in my case, it was. Biggest struggle. And I must acknowledge the help of my ex supervisor that were nice enough to help me improving and not me after reading my first.

Yeah, I guess it makes sense. You know, you have all this process and this research and you find, you know, oh, here's the conclusion. And then you have to take this large abstract, you know, cutting edge technology idea or conclusion, and you have to. Distill it down to, you know, the salient points or, you know, the, you know, the real meat of it.

And so I'm sure that's as much of an art as finding out the topic to research or providing, you know, a meaningful conclusion is being able to convey that idea in a way that is effective. You know, I never thought about that and this is just outweigh. Because once you have a piece of paper that is written, it's still not real science in the sense that you need to try to publish it and that's can become really challenge because you need to submit it and go to a peer review process.

I know that you've been published a bunch of times, it looks like you've been published, you know, uh, what was that looks like you have in terms of journal people, almost 30 journal papers. I wanted you to talk about. Little bit on what it is like to submit a scholarly article to a journal paper. And yeah.

What is, what does that look like? Cause I, I really have no idea working in the commercial fire protection, um, you know, uh, what that looks like. So the process is, uh, it's, uh, that you try to get the best that you can get in terms of shape of your ma. Not just in terms of writing, but also figure that are really good in terms of resolution, in terms of what they explain in terms of, uh, research process that you have done or results.

And also in terms of work in making sure that there is no type, um, must confess that I, one of the worst type of makers in the history. So you have to make sure that the text is. Not perfect, but almost there. And then you submit it to a journal that you believe where the article might fit. And there are a lot of tools from severe Springer that help you to select what's the best journal.

Another way to identify the best journal is to which particularly you're been citing quite a lot, which from which journal. They are from, and probably that means that this journal is kinda a carry on, on a research topic that has been really important for the journal. So once you select the journal, then you need to write an cover letter, explain it for the editor in why this new piece of research matter, why you wanna submit it to the journal.

So explain the rational. And, uh, submit it. And then what happen is that, uh, either the editor in chief or the associate editor is the one that read. Scan is journal. Try to understand what is talking about. If the quality is good enough for a journal publication. And after that, he decide to assign this. If he pass all the checks, you know, uh, he decide to send, uh, this journal for peer review, at least a couple, two, three external reviewer that are generally academic people or people from the industry that are really expert on that topic.

And ask them to go through the paper and advise in terms of, uh, quality of the, of this piece of research. And this process is generally blind with the reviewer and, uh, it can be also double blind in, in the, in the terms that the reviewer doesn't know who was written. Article and the work of the reviewer is to read all the paper and try to understand if it's acceptable for publication, if it required minor change, or if require major change, if it's not suitable enough or many different reason to journal and that provide the information to check.

And then the editor is the one moderating, try to understand what's the best decision to take using the advice of those reviewer and make the final decision. So if the editor decide to review, to go for, with the review process, he submit all the comments received by the reviewers, to the outdoors. They try to address it.

They send it back to the journal, edit it or send it to the reviewer. The reviewer, try to understand what have been to change and they provide again another decision. So this process can go in a loop awfully for two, no more than two or three times. And until the time the decision has been made, and there are some process, I have an example, which I, a journal paper under review for two years.

Wow. Or others that instead they were under review for. Three four months. It really depends on what's the situation of the review process. So my advice for all the researchers to be patients and appreciate all the work of the reviewer and the editors, because it's all voluntary job, no one is paying for you.

I'm working as an 80 and as a editorial board for several journals in the far engineering safety science for technology and far safety. And as far safety journal, and I can say that all this work is done by, for free. So everyone need to be patient and be respectful of the work done by others. That's really interesting.

I, I did not know anything about that. That's. That's super fascinating to hear you talk about just the process of selecting the journal. I, you know, I didn't think about the fact that, you know, you have to be selective about what journal you're submitting to, and it's a process of feel like you were saying, finding out the references and, you know, uh, going back and forth on.

Uh, what journal might be interested in type of work you're doing. And I found that. Really, uh, interesting. And I'd never imagined that it would be such a collaborative process, uh, back and forth. If you will. I, in my mind, as somebody who's uninformed, I would've imagined it was here's my work, you know, if you like it, You put it in the journal, if not, you know, uh, you don't put it in the journal, but it's man, it sounds like it's a, it's a huge collabora, a collaborative process.

And, um, it's really more of a back and forth, a tennis match of, you know, uh, making this work together. It can be also frustrating game match and, uh, expression. If you are at the beginning, you don't really know the system and. And I can remember the first review process in which I was reading it and say, I close my computer and try to read it in a week because now I'm too pissed off with everything that I go.

I can imagine that, uh, man, I, I can imagine being impatient, waiting for a month, let alone for years. I can't. I would just be man. I would think that would be really difficult to, but I, but I like what you said about respecting the editor and that they're doing. Of their own volition and on their own time.

And you know, they're doing it for free, so you have to have a underlying respect for the editor and for the journal itself. So I thought that was, uh, a wise thing to say. So that's interesting. Really cool. Um, That was great. What does that average day look like for somebody who is a teacher and a researcher and somebody who also edits for, uh, scholarly journals?

What is, what does your day look like? Take me through, take me through average. My, my day, I must university start going to office, try to smile to everyone. and. Because, you know, I'm Italian, so I need to make coffee to everyone there. You, you go desire coffee, and that's the way to kick in and start the day.

And generally the, the first things that it will work is check my emails and try not to freak out with the amount of emails that every. And, uh, because you receive email from students, you receive email from colleagues and other work things and meetings. And so I try to schedule a bit, what's the goal of the day.

Generally I give all the, if I receive email from students to answer them and especially if the some deadline is approaching and, uh, if it's a day more focused on researching, try to do. A bit of more research that can be that analysis that can be writing or reviewing a, a piece that has been already reviewed by someone else.

And so try to make the changes that have been suggested. And generally then I try to have a break for lunch at least to get a bit of oxygen, light lunch, bit of salad, trace. To have a walk to refresh my brain in the afternoon, I try to keep doing things and I try to slowly start doing something that is lighter for me in terms of less demand.

Like the writing is things that I must do the morning because my brain is rested enough to do it's such intensive work in the afternoon. I try to do more soft work there can. For me, like, uh, doing data analysis, they can be finished reading and answering all the other emails until the moment in which I understand that my brain is off in that case, it's better to turn anything goes.

And go home, but it happens quite often that over evening after dinner, I keep reading emails for emails or doing a bit of work thinking about what can be something cool to do in the future, stuff like that. I must say that doing, being a research and a teacher is not a job is a lifestyle because even sometimes it's really difficult to switch off even during the weekend.

I imagine it sounds like it is a lifestyle, you know, the dealing with the students and the research. And I'm sure it's hard to turn that off. That's interesting. It sounds like you're a morning person like me cuz I front load all my brain heavy work in the morning too. Cuz that's when all my best energy is.

So I thought that was kind of funny cuz I definitely feel the same way. Try to get the most grueling task out in the morning. Gym can help as well before going to work to it's like another shot, like coffee to really have the brain super active and capable to do all the extreme. Work, it need to be done.

That's good advice. I like that. I like that. So I wanted to kind of get into some, uh, professional development questions and, you know, just kind of sounds like you've had some experience in the industry and it sounds like you deal with students frequently and had that you have some good advice. So I just wanted to plug your brain a little bit for, uh, professionals and young professionals.

I heard you give a couple pieces of advice for students in our interview, but what would you tell somebody getting into the industry for fire protection or for studying, uh, fire safety or for researching fire safety? Do you have any piece of advice that you would think about given somebody like that is a really broad topic?

So my advice is to find something that make you a passionate. because if it's you tackle it, like, again, you don't go any longer at work exam. I need to do that simulation there. I need to do that. Try to find something that is really exciting for you. Yeah. Money is important. Selecting based on what is gonna be your salary is important, but it's always good to find something that make your life interesting that make your working experience interesting, because you're gonna spend most of your.

In front of the computer at least 40 hours per week. So it's really important. And there are so many cool things that you can do in, uh, in the far protection fields from simulation and modeling to that can be applied for far, uh, far modeling that can be applied for ion modeling or passive protection system or coordination of the project.

So there are so many things, and my advice is always to find something that. Really make us vibrating inside. That means that it's the right things. And you feel really that you're doing something that you really care and that makes your life and working experience much better. That's awesome. I like that.

Yeah. I think that, you know, one of the best pieces of advice that I got, you know, his, uh, You know, not only is it important to think about, you know, money seems nice, you know, when you're a student, you know, not making very much, but, uh, it's important to choose a career where you'll have good mentors and you will enjoy the work that you're doing, because like you said, yeah, that's your life.

The working exactly the work environment is perfect things to look at. It's not just a matter salary. You need to be happy. Collaborate with your people at work, work with them and find the way to get something done and something that can be even cooler done. And definitely, and I've heard you say more than one time that you've had some good mentors and good people who are helping you, uh, develop.

So I think that that's always a important, important thing. So is there anything, is there anything that you wish you would've known before you started down your current career path that you know now, but you didn't know when you started out, is there anything specific. Oh, it's difficult to say. And generally, I would say before I started doing my research, I wish I knew more math , but it's never enough.

I can say mathematics be to have a mathematics background. Statistic background is always a good thing, at least for what I do. And I believe that's also for any person working in the. In engineering field and I keep studying it. I'm not trying to say that I'm always trying to learn new things and try to apply new things.

And that's the exciting things about my work. I try to find that in the week, sometimes study new things and try to understand, oh, can do things better. Be is something that is really important for my job. I should say that. Uh, no, there was. There is no much that I would have prefer to know because I'm happy where I am.

And, uh, I believe that it was a nice, tough, but nice, tough to reach the place where I am now. I feel similarly to how you feel. You gotta kind of just figure it out as you go. And there's no magic bullet for, you know, just figuring it out. One thing that I wanted to ask earlier, I, uh, slipped my mind was, um, so what is the degree program for that you're, uh, teaching for?

Like what, what degree are students getting when they're in these classes? Like your BIM class or your, um, egress class, or, I don't know if you are construction or VR or AR class. Yeah. And, uh, basically I teach in the undergrad program in construction of construction in, uh, at mass universities, a three years program that allow our student to construction, project manager, pen, construction quantities.

And my paper, my course is right at the end of this process, in which I show them the potential of this new technology. And, uh, or BIM or virtual reality, augmented reality 3d can be all used to make our life much easier in the construction world. But, um, we have also master program with five different, uh, major and.

Project management, quantit survey, construction, law, facility management, and building technology. And, uh, we are planning to open also new path in, uh, digital construction in which, as you can think, just listening this, uh, this, uh, major, there are different specialization for our, uh, master. And it's a really exciting master because we have a lot of, uh, student that get in a special international student that camp, they learn about, uh, new things.

And then they have the possibility to apply it in a really dynamic and exciting, uh, working place. Like. Oakland or the full New Zealand. There is so much of demand for our student that is really challenging to be unemployed with our degrees. Yeah. You really need to work hard not to be employed. Yeah. The fire protection in the United States has a really good rate of employment.

Uh, the, the students who come out of. My degree plan at Oklahoma state university, they usually come out with a couple job offers. Um, if you have, uh, decent grades and maybe an internship, it's usually pretty easy for, it seems like fire safety is and fire protection is so young and just kind of the market is starved for these kind of individuals who are, um, On the cutting edge of construction and on, you know, involved with fire protection, Zealand is definitely a nice place to look for a job.

If you really want to have a life change is a beautiful place to work and live, and there is so much demand. So it's something that I really advice to everyone that is thinky to make a move. I never thought about it. It would be interesting for me. Think about, um, what, uh, yeah, you can just send me your CB.

just kidding. No, I just was saying, I just wonder about all the differences just culturally, you know, from the us and New Zealand, you know, from the different ways that we work. I'm sure there's more than a couple, but, uh, yeah, I have no idea. I'd never been anywhere close to New Zealand, so I don't even have.

Have, uh, context for that. I, I must say that, uh, SF, we have a nice SF chapter in New Zealand, which is, uh, really helpful. We have also to be connected with, with the industry. There is also the farm protection association. Uh, we have also the Institute of our engineering, so it's a nice, uh, combination of organization and association that help to.

Create networking with the, with our small, do you participate in any professional societies? Are you, do you go to meetings or do they have student chapters? I involve quite a lot with the fire protection association, especially with the special group, uh, on, uh, if equation, Andre, which is led by my, my friend and colleague, Phil Jackson.

It is one of my main collaborator to run evacuation drills and collect data, especially in retirement homes. Hmm. So it's, uh, has been really nice guy to work with. Cause he's the one helping me to be connected with the real world and not just lock myself out of the real world in my. And I must say that also SFP has been helping me quite a lot.

It gave me a, a small research grant. Start doing more research on retirement homes. So I've been supported by quite a lot of, uh, organization and society do my research and to spread the results of my research. That's awesome. It sounds like you've been, uh, gaining a lot of traction, uh, with the grants and, you know, it sounds like this new.

This new work that you're doing with N is really exciting. Um, I saw that you have a talk coming up, um, about, oh yeah. It's tomorrow. That's so exciting. What's your, what's your speech about, I'm gonna show virtual reality, augment reality for investigation of human behavior and training. And, uh, I'm gonna show all the work done in collaboration with so many university around the world.

And better if I start preparing the slides. that's awesome. Yeah. Well, hopefully this can be your practice run for your speech. Yeah. Get your mind wrapped around maybe some questions. People will be asking you the presentation will probably online on my YouTube channel. Oh yeah. Fairly soon. Probably the end of the week.

So feel free to find me on YouTube or any other social media. Me. Yeah. What's, what's the name of your YouTube channel? Feel free to plug whatever you'd like. It's like, uh, my full name and, uh, surname Ruggiero. Loreo it's a really long spelling. I think it's, my name is gonna be in the description of this broadcast.

Just copy and paste on YouTube and you'll find. I'm the Italian guy. There you go. We'll put your, uh, YouTube channel and, uh, any other social media links in your show notes, if you like. And that's awesome. I'm glad we could, that we could plug something for you and, uh, people can find you and watch your talk.

I'm sure it'll be very interesting. Yeah, you will find a lot of nice material. On my channel. Great. That's awesome. Well, thanks for coming on the podcast, Reno. I can't, uh, tell you it's been a pleasure talking with you. It's been a pleasure talking with you. Thank you for inviting.

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