Dr Hashempour is a Senior Lecturer in Fire Engineering and Course Lead for the BEng (Hons) Fire Engineering programme in the Department of Architecture and Built Environment. He completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Fire Protection Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), Massachusetts, USA, from 2016 to 2018, following the award of his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Southern Queensland, Australia, in 2016.
Following his postdoctoral fellowship, Dr Hashempour served as an Assistant Teaching Professor at WPI for one semester before continuing his academic career as an Assistant Professor in Fire Protection Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNC Charlotte). He also has two years of academic experience in the GCC region, working at a University of Lancashire-affiliated campus offering a Fire Safety Engineering programme. He has experience of leading fire engineering programmes as a programme director, as well as designing and equipping fire safety and fire protection engineering laboratories.
His research interests cover a broad range of fire engineering topics, including evacuation behaviour and life safety, Wildland–Urban Interface (WUI) fires, artificial intelligence, remote sensing, and bio-based fire retardants. He is currently working on several funded research projects, including projects on structural health monitoring, battery and e-bike fires, and smart firefighting technologies.
Javad is a Chartered Engineer (CEng), registered with the UK Engineering Council; a Certified Fire and Explosion Investigator (CFEI) through the National Association of Fire Investigators (NAFI) in the USA; and a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy (FHEA). Dr Hashempour serves as a member of several academic and industry committees, including BSI FSH/21 (Reaction to Fire Tests), BSI FSH/25 (Smoke and Heat Control Systems and Their Components), and CIB W120 (Disasters and the Built Environment).
- Wildland–Urban Interface (WUI) Fires
- Evacuation Behaviour and Modelling
- Fire Dynamics and Computational Fluid Dynamics
- Smoke Control Engineering
- Artificial Intelligence and Remote Sensing
- Doctor of Philosophy – University of Southern Queensland, Australia – 2012 - 2016
- Master of Science – University of Manchester, United Kingdom – 2009 - 2010
- Institution of Fire Engineers (IFE)
- National Association of Fire Investigators (NAFI)
- International Association of Fire Safety Science (IAFSS)
- British Standards Institution (BSI)
- Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE)
- BNV6206 Structural Fire Engineering
- BNV6208 Fire Design Project
- BNV6200 Individual Honours Project
- BNV6207 Fire Safety Management
- BNV5162 Fire Safety and Structural Design
- Doctor of Philosophy – Mech Eng. – University of Southern Queensland, Australia – 2012–2016
- Master of Science – University of Manchester, United Kingdom – 2009–2010
- Smart Fire Safety and Emergency Response
- Wildland–Urban Interface (WUI) Fires
- Structural Health Monitoring and Infrastructure Resilience
- Evacuation and Life Safety
- Biomaterials and Fire Retardancy
- Javad Hashempour, Babak Bahrani, Michael Kinsey, Horizontal Movement of Kindergarten Children during a Primary School Fire Evacuation Drill, Fire Technology, 61(6), pp. 4449-4466, 2025.
- Javad Hashempour and Babak Bahrani, Evacuation behaviors of children and adolescents during fire drills in school settings. 5th International Fire Safety Symposium (IFireSS 2025), Belfast, United Kingdom, June 2025
- Javad Hashempour, Babak Bahrani, Bryan Hoskins, Sohaib Abujayyab, Assessing evacuation movement in a K-12 school: children and adolescence speed and flows over stairs and through exit doorways, Fire and Materials, 48(6), pp.617-631, 2024.
- Awad, A. M., Wikantika, K., Ali, H., Abujayyab, S. K., & Hashempour, J. (2024). Optimization of new fire department location using an improved GIS algorithm for firefighters travel time estimation. International Journal of Emergency Services, 13(1), 80-97.
- Hashempour, J., Shebani, Z., & Kimble, J. (2023). Mental distress symptoms among Muscat firefighters: the impact of sociodemographic factors, sleep disturbance and smoking. International Journal of Emergency Services, 12(3), 295-305.
- Abujayyab, S. K., Karas, I. R., Hashempour, J., Emircan, E., Orçun, K., & Ahmet, G. (2023, October). Wildfire Detection from Sentinel Imagery Using Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). In The Proceedings of the International Conference on Smart City Applications (pp. 341-349). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.
Please refer to Dr Hashempour’s google scholar page for the full list of publications
Javad has extensive experience in fire engineering practice as a Chartered Fire Engineer and consultant, having worked on a wide range of projects across diverse built-environment contexts. He also has experience collaborating with industry, particularly start-ups, on the development, testing, and implementation of products and services related to fire safety engineering.
