Marissa Dauner is a PhD student in the Heat and Fire Lab in the Department of Engineering, King’s College London. Her background is in Mechanical Engineering, having received her MSc degree from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2025 and her BSc from Marquette University in 2022 in this discipline. Marissa’s research focuses on modelling combustion characteristics for vegetation present in the arctic and identifying effects of fuel moisture, distribution and modes of combustion on fire spread.

Prior to King’s she studied volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions from prescribed burning in the Western United States.

Research Interests

Marissa is passionate about the impact of wildfires on the environment in an anthropogenically changing climate. Her research at King’s focuses on developing and improving multi-physical wildfire spread models for global applications, and especially in arctic fire regimes where climate change is having a significant impact on fuel loading.

• Wildfire Modelling
• Climate Change
• Heat Transfer
• Computational Engineering
• Biomass Burning Emissions

Thesis Title

Fire Spread Modelling: Effect of fuel moisture, distribution, and modes of combustion

Supervisor Team

First Supervisor: Dr Francesco Restuccia

Second Supervisor: Professor Chris Lorenz

Research Groups

• Heat and Fire Lab