UB researchers present wildfire simulation studies at AGU Annual Meeting
Published January 14, 2026
Associate Professor Negar Elhami-Khorasani’s research group has been advancing wildfire resilience through presentations, workshops and webinars.
In December 2025, the group contributed to two presentations at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Annual Meeting, developed in collaboration with the University of Wyoming, the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of California, Los Angeles.
According to their site, AGU is an international scientific society focused on supporting advocates and professionals in the field of Earth and space sciences.
Nisha Saharan
The presentations focused on simulation-based analyses of the 2025 Eaton Fire and hypothetical rebuilding scenarios, examining how alternative built-environment configurations could influence damage under intense fires. One of the presentations was delivered by UB PhD student Nisha Saharan, highlighting the group’s ongoing work at the intersection of fire dynamics, community design and risk reduction.
PhD Nisha Saharan's simulation of 2025 Eaton Fire.
Findings from the group inform community-scale wildfire risk assessment and help identify targeted mitigation actions within communities," says Elhami-Khorasani.
Elhami-Khorasani has been active in convening the broader engineering community around wildfire resilience. In collaboration with the National Council of Structural Engineers Associations, she helped organize a webinar held on the anniversary of the 2025 Southern California Fires, which attracted more than 350 attendees. The webinar brought together complementary perspectives on wildfire risk in the built environment, including lessons from other hazards, drivers of urban conflagrations, and impacts on critical infrastructure systems. Nima Masoudvaziri, a recent CSEE graduate, was one of the webinar speakers.
Elhami-Khorasani has also been involved in an NSF RAPID project following the 2025 Southern California Fires. The team is organizing a mini-symposium at the 2026 ASCE Engineering Mechanics Institute Conference focused on wildfire impacts and resilience at the wildland-urban interface. In addition, she serves on the organizing committees for the 2026 International Conference on Structures in Fire and the 2026 NSF National Hazard Engineering Research Infrastructure Computational Symposium.
