Alexander Maranghides (Fed)

Mr. Maranghides received both his B.S. Mechanical Engineering with Aerospace Concentration, and his M.S. in Fire Protection Engineering, from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts. Mr. Maranghides has over 25 years of experience in large-scale testing, and 20 years in post-fire reconstructions.

Mr. Maranghides has worked for 7 years at the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), on the Navy's Halon Replacement Program. Between 1995 and 2000 Mr. Maranghides was the Test Director for NRL Real Scale Halon Replacement Test Program where he worked on the development of a holistic approach to halon replacement fire protection system design. In that capacity he analyzed current US Navy Fleet fire suppression system design criteria and firefighting doctrine. He is the co-inventor, with Dr. Ronald Sheinson of NRL, of the Water Spray Cooling System (WSCS), a patented gaseous agent suppression enhancing system that is used to protect shipboard compartments in navies around the world.

After joining NIST, Mr. Maranghides ran the NIST Large Fire Laboratory for seven years where he was responsible for the design and execution of hundreds of large-scale experiments. In the past twenty years, Mr. Maranghides has focused his research on the national Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Fire problem. He has spent years in the field collecting, analyzing, and documenting WUI fires, and he has led all four NIST WUI Fire case-study reconstructions. His WUI findings have impacted national and regional standards. He is currently leading a multi-year, multi-agency effort to quantify fire spread between residential structures.

His technical fields of expertise include halon replacements, fire suppression, large-scale fire testing, and the wildland-urban interface.