San Francisco Fire Department approved 3rd party smoke control peer reviewer
Dr. Rich, a former Rescue Captain and Paramedic with the San Francisco Fire Department, is a founding partner at Reax Engineering, a thermal sciences consulting firm based in San Francisco’s Bay Area. Dr. Rich has comprehensive experience in fire testing, analysis, and modeling to support research and development, litigation, and fire safe design. He is a designated 3rd party peer reviewer for the City of San Francisco specializing in evaluation of building fire safety systems, especially performance-based systems supported by computational methods and scale modeling. Dr. Rich is a testifying expert providing scientific support to issues of fire cause and origin, construction defect, code compliance, and fire toxicity. He is active in code development processes through membership in IEC TC 89 (Fire Hazard Testing), and TC 108 (Safety of Electronic Equipment) and ASTM E05 (Fire Standards). Dr. Rich earned his Ph.D. in the Combustion and Fire Processes Laboratory at the University of California working with NASA on fire behavior in zero gravity conditions. He is a regular lecturer in thermo-fluid sciences in the Berkeley Department of Mechanical Engineering and in the Fire Protection Engineering graduate program at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
