Arup Professor of Fire and Structures

Arup is supporting the five year appointment of Dr Luke Bisby as the first Arup Professor of Fire and Structures at the University of Edinburgh.

The appointment follows on from Dr Bisby’s prior appointment as the Ove Arup Foundation/Royal Academy of Engineering Senior Research Fellow in Structures in Fire.

The aim of this new appointment is to help move the concept of structural fire engineering from a specialist interest area to a core engineering discipline which is fully integrated into the building design process. When realized, this will benefit the design and construction of the built environment through a combination of capital cost reductions, improved safety and structural resilience, enhanced property protection and business continuity, greater overall sustainability and structural optimization.

“Arup has been the acknowledged world leader in performance based fire engineering for more than four decades and I am delighted to take up this inaugural role at Edinburgh University. My work will benefit Arup through early access to research results and from an ability to request research in support of specific commercial needs. In turn, my research group will benefit from insights into real engineering problems.”

Dr Luke Bisby

“Despite great advances in knowledge during the past three decades, in most cases the design of structures to resist the effects of fires remains surprisingly over-simplified; relatively little performance based structural engineering is performed during the fire safety design of a building. The work Dr Bisby undertakes in his new role will be invaluable in developing an improved understanding of the impacts of fire in the built environment and, as fire engineers, we will be able to respond to cutting edge research to continually improve our work.”

Barbara Lane, Director, Arup