Turning up the heat
by Nathaniel Miller
If you can’t stand the heat, don’t get out of the kitchen; talk to Morgan Bruns.
The Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering plays cool about his career, but Bruns, Ph.D., has a résumé that, as members of Gen Z would say, is fire.
After earning his doctorate at the University of Texas at Austin, he officially took a position at the National Institute of Standards and Technology as a mechanical engineer in the Fire Research Division, where he worked as a postdoctoral associate.
One of his projects included determining the ignition propensity of cigarettes — meaning he and the team were looking for new ways to lessen the likelihood of an accidental fire that could start inside a home.
“Long story short, it involved me burning a lot of cigarettes, putting them on a stack of filter paper and then recording whether they self-extinguished or burned to the filter,” Bruns said. “It was dull work because it’s like watching paint dry.”
Luckily, Bruns’ work focused on more than watching cigarettes burn. Material property determination, fire modeling, wallboard fire resistance, and investigating the fire hazards associated with residential upholstered furniture were other areas of his work.
Fireproof items can be easy to overlook, Bruns said. With the recent coverage of the 2025 California wildfires and 2023 Maui wildfires, the importance of fireproofing homes in the wildland-urban interface, or the zone where human-developed land meets wilderness, has never been more critical.
“Fire has such varying spreading conditions with wind speed, humidity and the dryness of plants and trees and shrubs,” he said. “It’s definitely a big problem.”
His career soon turned to igniting fires of a different kind in 2018 — the education of students.
Engineering for the classroom
It makes sense, he said, about becoming a professor. His natural curiosity about how the world works and his love of math and science led him to become a mechanical engineer.
Bruns came to St. Mary’s University in 2021. He teaches Heat Transfer and Fluid Mechanics and uses examples from his past work in his curriculum.
“I’ve given an example in exams before where I’ve said, ‘Here’s a gypsum wallboard assembly with two layers, and there’s a fire on the other side of the room; tell me what the temperature in the neighboring room is going to be,’” he said. “And then they use the things they learned in Heat Transfer to do that.”
His interest in the world of fire safety hasn’t flamed out. Bruns is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Fire Sciences and helped organize a workshop for the International Association of Fire Safety Science. He still uses fire in demonstrations, such as showing visiting high school students how a steam engine works using an aluminum can.
Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Juan D. Ocampo, Ph.D., who chairs the Department of Engineering, said Bruns’ expertise in “computational methods for fire propagation modeling is critical in advancing our understanding of how wildfires spread and how we can better contain them.”
“Beyond his research, Dr. Bruns is deeply committed to involving undergraduate students in real-world, applied research,” Ocampo said. “By engaging them in cutting-edge fire modeling projects, he is preparing the next generation of fire engineers to tackle one of today’s most pressing environmental challenges. His work not only strengthens St. Mary’s research profile but also equips students with the skills and knowledge to make a meaningful impact in wildfire prevention and mitigation.”
Bruns said he enjoys watching students discover their interest in certain subjects.
“They work great together, like each other and have a great sense of humor,” Bruns said. “They’re here for a reason, and they’re motivated, so it’s been a privilege to teach them.”
