FSRI Welcomes New Research Engineer and Postdoctoral Researcher

Meet the new members of the FSRI team!

Mark McKinnon

Mark McKinnon is joining the team as a Research Engineer. Mark has an M.S. in Fire Protection Engineering and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland. His research at the University of Maryland focused on the development of a generalized methodology to characterize composite materials for pyrolysis models as well as the development and instrumentation of a bench-scale gasification apparatus to study pyrolysis with well-defined boundary conditions. Mark joined the Fire Safety Research Institute (FSRI), part of UL Research Institutes from the consulting world, where his work involved fire modeling, performance-based design, fire-related litigation, environmental regulation consulting, material flammability testing and experimental design.

Kimberly DeGracia

Kimberly DeGracia is joining the team as a Postdoctoral Researcher. She obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Biochemistry from the University of Texas at Austin and a PhD in Macromolecular Science and Engineering from Case Western Reserve University. Her dissertation focused on the flammability and sustainability of flame retarded poly (butylene terephthalate) materials. During graduate school, she spent a summer at NIST in the Flammability Reduction Group of the Fire Research Division working with Mauro Zammarano on flame-retardant coatings for residential upholstered furniture.