Ghanekar honored for fire safety research by Illinois Fire Service Institute

MechSE graduate student Shruti Ghanekar recently won the Illinois Fire Service Institute (IFSI) Student Award for Firefighter Life Safety Research for her dedication to improving firefighter safety.

Ghanekar was also recognized for a recent publication on which she was first author, “In-situ measurement of water-vapor in fire environments using a real-time tunable diode laser based system.”

She is a doctoral candidate in Professor Tonghun Lee’s Advanced Propulsion and Energy Laboratory. Ghanekar earned a B.Tech in 2016 from SRM University in India. Her research focus is on fire safety and tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy (TDLAS).

The IFSI is the statutory fire academy for the state of Illinois. It is operated as a continuing education and public service activity by the University of Illinois. The campus in Champaign offers real-life training props and features one of the few locations in the U.S. that still uses live-fire structural burn training. The institute also houses the Firefighter Life Safety Research Center, in which scientists and engineers conduct applied research that addresses real-world health and safety challenges facing first responders.