Alek Berg

Yuying Ren and Alek Berg Win the 2026 Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Summit Student Pitch Competition

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 18:16:24 +0000

Yuying Ren and Alek Berg Win the 2026 Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Summit Student Pitch Competition Gabriela Rocha Sales Wed, 08/12/2026 - 12:16

Congratulations to Yuying Ren and Alek Berg for winning the 2026 Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Summit Student Pitch Competition!

WUI fires present a complex set of challenges that require an interdisciplinary set of solutions. As such, a major goal of the 2026 WUI Fire Engineering Summit is to encourage collaboration between researchers from different engineering subfields and related backgrounds. Find out more about the competition here.

Their proposal "WUI-LLM: A decision Support Dashboard for High-Quality Wildland-Urban Interface Data" won the main prize, courtesy of support provided by the United Engineering Foundation and the SFPE Foundation. The project was supervised by their advisor, Stefan Leyk.

Project Description: Our group has published high-quality and peer-reviewed maps of wildland urban interface (WUI) and fire exposure probability maps through time (1990 to 2020) for WUI properties in the contiguous United States. These maps present a detailed view into how U.S. WUI areas have evolved through time and what present wildland fire exposures they may face. A key gap is the dissemination of our high-fidelity information to decision makers and stakeholders. We propose a unified, decision support dashboard, “WUI-LLM,” that collates these data into a clear presentation of how built environments across the U.S. interact with flammable wildlands. WUI-LLM will map structure level WUI classifications and fire exposure probabilities and allow users to interact with these data using a large-language model enhanced query system to allow for on-the-fly spatial analysis. Our dashboard will remove technical barriers in quantifying community risk to wildland fire and how that risk has changed over time.

WUI White Paper Knowledge Gaps Addressed: Our proposed WUI-LLM decision support dashboard combines peer reviewed high-resolution WUI and wildfire probability layers tied to individual structures across the conterminous U.S. Our proposed work, directly addresses key gaps identified in the white paper, specifically the “lack of standardized methodologies for the calculation of quantitative values of parcel-level fire exposure...”, the need for “categorization of fire exposure scenarios…based on their likelihood of occurring,” and “a need for peer reviewed risk assessment tools at the WUI property level” (Section 3.4). Overarchingly, our temporal WUI (1985-2020) data fill the need for systematic historical datasets to validate wildfire risk and vulnerability (Section 4.4), while our structure-level exposure data respond to the need for accessible parcel-level risk assessments (Risk Assessment at the Parcel Level). WUI-LLM further bridges the gap between complex fire engineering tools and decision-making by enabling interactive, multi-scale analysis through an LLM-driven platform.

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Recipients of the Spring 2025 James A. and Jeanne B. DeSana Conference Travel Award

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 13:47:11 +0000

Recipients of the Spring 2025 James A. and Jeanne B. DeSana Conference Travel Award Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 04/21/2025 - 07:47

Recipients of the Spring 2025 James A. and Jeanne B. DeSana Conference Travel Award: Alek Berg, Ethan Carr, Xiaoling Chen, Drolma Gadou, Fan Li, Sherrie Liu, Luca Palasti, Chris Picard, Holly Roth, Mallory Sagehorn, Nic Tarasewicz, Lauren Thomas, and Zhongying Wang

This award, made possible by an anonymous donor, is to be used to “support graduate student research.” To honor the donor’s wishes, the Department makes this award late in the Spring semester so that it can be used for conference travel through the end of Fall 2025.

Spring 2025 Recipients:

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Welcome to Our Fall 2023 Graduate Students

Anonymous — Wed, 23 Aug 2023 19:18:33 +0000

Welcome to Our Fall 2023 Graduate Students Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 08/23/2023 - 13:18

Please join us in welcoming our incoming graduates for Fall 2023!

Fall 2023 Graduate Student Group Photo - Back Row: Sepedieh Jalayer, Alek Berg, Sara Flemming, Chris Picard, Theo Kuhn, Kate Little, Michela Savignano, John Dzwonczyk. Front Row: Annika Hirmke, Jennifer Morse, Tenzin Yangkey, Zaria Cast, Mallory Sagehorn, Rahila Yilangai, Chris McNabb, Josie Welsh, and Zhou Yu

Back Row: Sepideh Jalayer, Alek Berg, Sara Fleming, Chris Picard, Theo Kuhn, Kate Little, Michela Savignano, John Dzwonczyk. Front Row: Annika Hirmke, Jennifer Morse, Tenzin Yangkey, Zaria Cast, Mallory Sagehorn, Rahila Yilangai, Chris McNabb, Josie Welsh, and Zhou Yu

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