084 - Industry lead research with Steve Gwynne and Mike Spearpoint

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 0:00

Hello everybody. My name is Wojciech Wegrzynski, I'm a professor of fire science at ITB in Poland. And I'm super happy to welcome you to another Fire Science Show episodes. We had the great streak of amazing episodes. Lately, and I hope today does not break the streak because I am interviewing two. Absolute star. So fire science. That is professor Steve Gwynne from Movement strategies And Lund university. And Dr. Mike Spearpoint the research lead at OFR and I'm going to talk with them about the industry led research. I'm going to tell you a little more about the episode in few moments, but I really can't wait to give you the big announcement of this year. The one that I was teasing. in the previous episode, So it finally happened for the year 2023. The Fire Science Show has partnered with OFR Consultants. Who are now the diamond sponsor of the podcast. This is good news. Not only for me, but for everyone, because with allow me to produce this podcast without any paywalls or limitations. Uh, in the high quality that you expect and with all creative freedom that I used to have. So I guess it's a win-win for everyone. I am also very happy that the partner of the podcast is actually OFR who is a company that has great set of core values that are very close to my. Set of core values. OFR was built by fire safety and risk engineers for the purpose of doing fire safety and risk engineering. So they're very focused in line with what we are talking about in the podcast. It's also a company that does a lot of research, but that that's, you're going to learn from today's episode. Uh, with OFR we have a lot of things in common, and I am super happy to work with them to provide you this podcast as it was, or maybe even better for at least one long year. So the show is not going anywhere. Uh, I don't want to ramble too much about the collaboration details and I will have a Q and a episode planned for later this week where I will be answering. Uh, the questions and coming and commenting the listener experience survey that went out in December, I've gathered a lot of feedback and I would love to comment on that. And also it will give me a chance to talk about the OFR partnership and how we, it will unravel for the podcast. What does it mean for the podcast? What does it mean for the listeners? If you would like to know that join the in the Q and a episode. Now, back to the podcast episode, Mike Spearpoint and Steve Gwynne or sure. Our legends of fire safety. And they both come from very interesting backgrounds. Both of them have been academics. Both of them worked for governments or in some sort of government laboratory sense of point of their careers. And now both of them are research leaders in large engineering companies. And that's why I've invited them. Because when you look at the finer science landscape, it is obvious that companies. Do a lot of research, a lot of useful research, a lot of impactful research. And I would like to understand why, like, why are they investing in science usage? What are their KPIs, what they want to get back from that and how it actually works, how it differs from academia. I think it's a very interesting thing to discuss, especially that the podcast is listened by. A lot of young people who struggle with their life decisions, whether go academia or whether go industry. I can tell you both roads are great. And I hope this podcast episode will, Show you that the differences in some aspects are maybe less than you would think of. So add that was a very long intro. So let's not prolong this anymore. Let's spin the music and let's go with the episode. This podcast is brought to you in collaboration with OFR Consultants and multi award winning independent consultancy, dedicated to addressing fire safety challenges. OFR is the UKs leading fire risk consultancy. It's globally established team has developed the reputation for preeminent fire engineering expertise with colleagues working across the world to help protect people, property and planet. In the UK, that includes the redevelopment of the Printworks building in Canada. Water. One of the tallest residential buildings in Birmingham, as well as historic structures, like the Jenners Building in Edinburgh and the National Gallery National History Museum and the National Portrait Gallery in London. Internationally it's work ranges from the Antarctic to the Atacama desert in Chile and the number of projects across Africa. In 2023, OFR will grow with its team and it's keen to hear from industry professionals who want to collaborate. On fire safety futures this year. Get in touch at ofrconsultants.com. And now back to the episode with Mike and Steve. Hello everybody. Welcome to the Fire Science Show. I'm here today with two great experts, uh, first Professor Steve Gwynne from Movement Strategies and Lund University. Hey Steve,

Steve Gwynne: 5:03

Hi, how's it going?

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 5:04

I'm going great. Thank you Steve. And Mike Spearpoint, head of research at of R.OFRHey, Mike.

Mike Spearpoint: 5:10

See you again.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 5:11

Yep. Happy to have you. One of the most requested comebacks to the podcast by the audience. Uh, that's a heavy burden, Mike. I ho I hope we can all carry that guys, uh, that's an interesting topic proposed for the today's session, which is industry led research. And, the point of this discussion is, I guess to understand the role industry has in building up fire research, maybe even fire science, from the email exchange before the episode and the little discussion we just had. I, I guess it's, uh, nice to start with the fact that we have research science and development, which are three things, but maybe, uh, three different things. So, maybe one of you would like to start where's the research in the grand scheme of science?

Steve Gwynne: 5:59

so. I'll speak from the evacuation side of the equation, right? The human behavior side of it, or you know, the people movement side of it. I think. because it's in, in comparison to our understanding and and practice of, of fire science, it's a, slightly, less mature field. Oftentimes, the practice of it in, in industry requires more dedicated research because there's less boiler plate out there in order to do the thing in practice. So you end up doing quite a lot of background work, even in those projects that are not dedicated research projects, but are, consultancy projects, but actually it involves new thinking. So my, in my head research in that context has value beyond the specific consultancy project on which you are working. And that may actually be a new method or actually going out and collecting new data. It may be applying it in a novel way. But that there's value beyond the lifetime of that project that might help others understand the problem or help someone within the company do the thing again, or indeed, more broadly may provide insights into how that should be done or might be done by other, in practice. So mu much like all research, it's meant to advance the field. That that field may be on multiple, different pastures, I

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 7:15

But does it mean that we're missing so many puzzles that it's necessity to do the work you're doing.

Steve Gwynne: 7:22

Well, I think, I think it's a slight misrepresentation, I think to ever think that, the field of knowledge is complete or stable. and, and think of what happened in, the pandemic, right? We thought we understood a lot of things and we certainly didn't, and we had to scramble to update that understanding. I think that's very much true in an area such as, you know, human behavior and fire, which is very sensitive to changes in design to changes in technology to changes in demographics. So you've got multiple different, uh, influences, very few of which are under your control, but you are subject to their impact. And then you, you have to understand the response. And this is, both true of research and practice. There's a constant need to update your understanding, and that inevitably requires someone to go out, and do the updating. And, and that could be a dedicated researcher or someone engaged in a research task. But I'm not suggesting for one second that that doesn't also exist on the other side of the equation, but I think there's a bigger pile of, of of practical processes and, uh, that, that have been applied over a longer

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 8:26

Yeah,

Mike Spearpoint: 8:26

So I think Steve brings up some, some interesting points there. And now I'm gonna dive into my amateur philosophy here, but you know, the idea of knowledge and what we know. And don't, I might drift off to what, what we might call the Donald Rumsfeld model. but we've got this sort of thing that Steve brings up here. It's kind of like there's an understanding of what we might call the fundamental mechanism of the universe. Chemistry, physics, or whatever. We, we know, we don't know everything about it. Maybe there's a possibility that one day we might know everything about it, and, but from my understanding, they're kind of fixed. Right? Whereas there's the sort of things that Steve's talking about, which we might call this, the research around society and society is changing, right? So, know, the way we we live now is different to previous generations and the way that people organize themselves, the way we have our sort of, um, acceptable levels of risk and all sorts of things. So there's a kind of ongoing researcher that's a of societal work. And, talk, I'm thinking about, for example, bringing up some research that myself and Steve, and you've had Anne Templeton on before, where Anne's part of that work has been looking at things like how much people trust current guidance in terms of fire safety. And that's a societal question cuz that, a moving target as people, are exposed to new events and their behavior change and family structures change and their demographics change. Those things are never kind of, fixed, in the same way that we might understand chemical reactions are sort of fixed. So, so there's kind of different types of research, in terms of those, those sort of, that spectrum.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 10:05

When Steve brought this, this topic, my immediate thought would that, that's interesting to talk industry led research because in fire science, I think, I look over the last years, the best papers I've read, a lot of them were industry led. Like the, it was literally coming from companies, so many interesting, uh, projects, developments that were carried by literally commercial companies. And I don't necessarily see a very. Direct link between research and revenue. You know, for a commercial company, I would expect it's like when company does something, they will do it for revenue, uh, because it, it increases their commercial viability. I, I see this not the case in, in a fire science and it really intrigues me because, you know, I'm coming from a cultural, uh, circle where the scientist is the one and, and at the top of the mountain, and they give you the knowledge and you are, very welcome to apply that. But, having the idea that, a company, privately owned, company that is essence maybe driven by profit would do, uh, scientific fundamental research. It, it's not something, uh, very obvious to me. And yet in fire science, as I venture outside of my cultural circle, I see that a lot and it's model that that's really working.

Steve Gwynne: 11:23

I do think we. Irrespective of where you are, you are working with a specific currency, right? And in academia, that currency could be publications I'm simplifying, but, you know, and in industry, currency may be, involves several different, example. So it could be publishing maybe a, another currency I'm certainly encouraged to publish, a is to make sure we, share insights provided to demonstrate competency and, and subject matter expertise and also to try and shape the area in which we work, right? I mean it part of what we do actually in practices in some ways to influence the next generation of, of work. Be that through, the research that we do or through, the, the practice that we do uh, you mentioned about, why, why would industry want to do it? Well, I think what has evolved, evolved over the last 20, 30 years is that the idea that research is only done in one place, I think is, has, has evolved somewhat. And I think what's, there is a natural home for it in academia because of the currency, because of the currency of publications and, student development and so on, um, industry, has access to different types of resources maybe that academia doesn't, know, it has an, access to ongoing real world problems

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 12:39

Okay.

Steve Gwynne: 12:39

to address. So one of the classics at the moment, I guess is the access to large pots of what they call them, data reservoirs that companies collect that industry might interact with on a more regular basis that, The research in an academic environment might not have access to. Now I'm not saying it shouldn't have access to it, I'm saying it's just less, less, direct. and so that's why oftentimes an industrial partner is so welcoming to a, a research project because it ha it provides that bridge to the, the ongoing, application of, of expertise and practice. I also think, and then I'll pass over, I do think that, and I'd say it's very unusual to have three people in a discussion that have or are working in government industry and, and academia, you know, or at some

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 13:24

A mix of them

Steve Gwynne: 13:25

Yeah. Yeah. I think in my head, I see them moving at different speeds. Typically, and I say I'm simplifying industry deals with the, the shorter term or can deal with the shorter term. Then you have academia, which he's trying to say, what do we know about that, that thing. And then government, which is how do we use that at the longer, in the longer frame timeframe. it historically, academia was the one that was responsible for shaping the new knowledge. I, I just think those lines are much more blurred now

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 13:56

Absolutely. They, they blurred a lot. And, when I see direct gain in this short term research that, that you've mentioned, like direct, answers for questions maybe, but also see a lot of fundamental research that may not lead to direct breakthrough, direct discovery. Not, not something you can build commerce on for sure. So, so it's also some sort of this higher motivation, which I would expect from academia, not from a company.

Mike Spearpoint: 14:26

Yeah, I just wanted to sort of take that thing that Steve talked about, the blurring of the lines and, how long that's been going. It, it might be hard. To judge and I, again, when we are kind of preparing for this discussion, but, we are kind of, sort of talked, touched on this, but in the end, when you look at, there's not this simple, delineation between industry research and academic research because, there's people who, industry who, interact with academia, they, Co supervised students and, and partner with universities. They might be, I mean, I know Steve's a professor at Lund University, so, so there's interaction that way. And of course there's interaction the other way that people in academia may be, contracted to provide advice to industry. So there's that, there's synergy there. Some academics will end up developing a product that might be span off by a university, and still have a, be a stakeholder in that product development. So, there's, there's this kind of, you know, some people think there's idea, there's just sort of academic research and industry research, but there's a much more melting pot of people who are interacting across. If you call it a boundary, but it isn't really a boundary. It's a, it's a continuum of, of those two, I suppose at two Extremes. We might think of one end industry research being very sort of utilitarian. It's solving a problem for today that needs to be solved. And the other end of the spectrum is kind of the academic side is, research is not there to, for any utility. uh, it doesn't matter whether it's useful or not, it's part of civilization is to, and human kind is to do these sort of thinking. And it doesn't matter what the value is. But again, I think there's, again, quite a wide continuum to solving tomorrow today's problem, to not solving a problem ever at all. somewhere in between. There's a, there's a lot of in between.

Steve Gwynne: 16:08

I do think, sorry, Cause I think it's an important point is if you think of fire safety or fire science or fire engineering, it's a, all of these things are, unless you're working at the extreme limits of fire science at one end, a pretty applied area. Like where the journey between us in engineering is much shorter than it might be in some of the more of pure mathematics or,

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 16:31

Particle physics.

Steve Gwynne: 16:32

Yeah, yeah. Or whatever, you know. Uh, and so that, distinction as Mike said is it's much grayer than it might otherwise be. I also think as well, don't forget that many universities actively consult. So there are many research departments that supplement their income through doing either model development, or supporting a consultancy or doing spin out. so it's not just a, a land grab of industry trying to hoover up or grab, grab research, I can't think of a project where I've been in, been involved in where there was university's industry and government presence that would've benefited by only being one of those.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 17:07

I, I would consider myself in this role as well as a research institute that does actively consult being underneath the government's wing, having a certified fire laboratory, having a consultancy practice, and being a scientist at the same time where I have to publish papers, do fundamental research. I often also take this chance, to do selfish research. I, I think I've said it many times on the, on the podcast that I, I try to research things that are very relevant to my practical work. And I highly appreciate actually the capability to have a real world, uh, problems at hand. I see that, especially when reviewing papers, many, Researchers over deliver on the promise, like, this paper will serve either fire investigators in this way or this will change the way how we detect fires in buildings. Oh boy. No, it will, it'll not. I mean it's an interesting concept, but it's, it concepts, we have a lot solutions is that we lack you. You think this, having this exposure to real world problems is something that anchors this science to the realm of feasibility. Yeah.

Steve Gwynne: 18:16

I think, I think, well, first of all, humility's a great thing, right? I think o overreaching is one of the more dangerous, traits that a researcher or a practitioner can have. I think that the goal is often subtly different. as someone whose role has been to try and develop a research capability and bring in researchers, the natural instinct of a researcher is to keep pushing. To keep going in a certain direction until they've gone as far as they can, and within the lifetime of a project that may, they may not have that scope. And that is a limiting factor in industry. Whereas you have a clearer deliverable that has to be met. Now, that doesn't mean you compromise the message. It means you, target that particular problem, but then you may continue beyond it and publish the broader work or publish, you know, and, and produce something that's genuinely novel in the field. But there's that twin track of doing what needs to be done for the thing in front of you so that it's good enough, and then answering the broader research question, which may require future or more broader thinking or future work, and then actually into a policy or, or regulatory structure, which is. almost bringing it, reigning it back in and saying, well, okay, this is what we know is gonna happen. Well, what can we really expect to influence on a broader scale? So there's that sort of tug of war going on, I think, in terms of expectations and, I don't, but what you can't do is compromise the message. You can't change your subject matter slash expert opinion to suit a particular client. You just make sure that the message is understood in the context of the project, and it's suitable for the, the scenarios you're looking at. I guess that's a slightly different question.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 19:55

Yeah. Mike, is it any hard to, to, uh, keep this integrity I don't think so.

Mike Spearpoint: 20:01

no, I don't. I, I don't think so.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 20:04

it's important, but it's important to keep it, and if you want to keep it, you will keep it. Uh, and I

Steve Gwynne: 20:10

I think it's a personal thing, right? It's as much as it's about hiring the right people and, and, and having oversight. and also I think as well, like it goes back to that currency thing, right? The currency of publications and the currency of quality of work. the work is really scrutinized in a, in an industrial environment. It's not just pushed out the door. The reputation a, an engineering company that has a science background, and that is producing intelligence in one form or another. If you, if you are caught, sort of, uh, um, cooking the books or taking shortcuts, that is a quick track to undermining your reputation and as, as corporates would call it, their branding. Do you, I mean their brand, if, if, you don't wanna be caught doing that because those shortcuts cost you a lot of, A lot of money and potentially existence. you, if you, if you can't be trusted and you don't have processes in place, just as academics institutions have pro those processes of oversight and ethics equivalent, we may call them different things, but we, we certainly have oversight and we certainly even refer to those type of ethics requirements as and when they're appropriate in, in, from, from other external organizations.

Mike Spearpoint: 21:14

I mean, as I was saying before we started the conversation, I mean, I happened to be doing a little talk on ethics last week at a university. But of course, all of us are engineers, and when you're a chartered engineer, you're all signing up to a, an ethical, framework through, in my case, the engineering council, and then through the Institute of Fire Engineers. so those, and those ethics, are, um, like Steve says, they're, they're similar or if not the same for academia, but and it all kind of stems you might say from your, personal, I mean, obviously you've got, you've got your employer, your industry, that, the ethical standards to meet there. But then of course there's, you, you've got your own ethical. Standard. And part of that discussion I was having last week was some of these things are, you know, some of these questions can get quite tricky in terms of what might be seen as right and wrong. and again, I dare not delve too much into my amateur philosophy. I've got a morality to read that's just, I've just bought, so, and I'll come back to that. And another one of called Ethics in Construction, which I need to read. So, uh, that's another day's reading or

Steve Gwynne: 22:19

do, I do think though, Mike, there is a, on a more basic level, if you what, whatever we do, right, whether it's in, in research, supporting a project or even a. A dedicated research project in and of itself, the outcome that's gonna be produced is undoubtedly imperfect, partial, and potentially incorrect. uh, at some point. As, as assessed in the future, most if not all scientific understanding will be overthrown in some form or another. especially in, in engineering. And, and know, in in engineering research or practice, it will be supplanted by some better approach and some planted by more appropriate data. So that humility that you need going in and the, the associated skepticism that you must have to question the validity of what you are doing. And that validity can get into ethics and it can get into process and it can get into presentation and sharing as much of the background information as you can. And that sort of transparency. uh, and you mentioned it earlier, vo check about reviewing articles, you know, If you've got the, a sufficiently seasoned eye, you know, where people are not being sufficiently transparent. you know, where people are not a masking something, because they're somewhat tentative about sharing a detail. but I think it's just better to, to acknowledge right upfront, like this is, everything could have been done better if you'd have started it at the end of the project.

Mike Spearpoint: 23:37

Yes.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 23:38

when, conceptualizing this talk, I had this, immediate example of, of where the industry led research could go rogue and that that is a case when someone would be researching a feature of their product and by this research they discovered doesn't work like as, as expected. And, uh, I guess this would be a place for, for the most difficult, uh, choices to be done. Like do we stuff this into, uh, closet and, and, and, never, uh, surface this research. But, uh, these, these things also have a history of, backfiring. Like what you said, Steve, about, the reputation gains. And I, I, for a long time, I, I thought this, this is an industry, this is a very specific industry problem. But then I, came to realization, that, and, and now I'm going a metro philosophy. Mike many researchers with, invest their lifetimes in their theories and they would be very defendant of the theory.

Steve Gwynne: 24:33

Yep.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 24:34

Even when faced with the, uh, proof that it's different, like you, Steve said, it inevitably it will be superseded by something, better either a different concept, either a more precise, uh, definition, either by realization that there are more variables into the equation that completely change the outcome. It it'll be superseded and, and the this supers precision. Uh, this, this process very difficult. And here again, you may be a scientist in an ivory tower and find something that contradicts lifetime of your discovery, and you would be confronted with the exact same, as an industrial. Uh, for some reason I felt that industrial, it's, it's like more, uh, obvious or more easy. But now, now, now I see academic would, would, uh, have the same problem, right?

Steve Gwynne: 25:23

unless you are, we, we is of this view of like, there was this, I dunno, like in the Victorian era in the uk there were these like gentlemen, scientists, self-funded who were working out of their shed in their garden and they just came up with these stunning findings. Unless you are a modern equivalent to that or an absolute genius, you probably work in a department and you probably have to get funding and you probably, have to align the, broad path of your research with that. So the idea that you have carp blanche over what you look at and how you look at it in academia is somewhat partial, I think is very,

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 25:56

Yeah. Do you do, do you actually do that? Ah,

Steve Gwynne: 25:58

Yeah. I mean, I, very few people I think have complete independence In addition, I think there's a broader discussion and we go back to the currency of publication as as how much of Publica do people publish all their results? So do you publish your failures? Do you publish where p isn't significant or whatever it is, do you publish? and that may be unbelievably important something doesn't work or that is it isn't important or, or that it a classic in fire that it was a near miss, that it wasn't an actual fire that, that that caused loss of life or huge damage. And so it might not appear on the radar as much, but there might be enormous lessons that we might learn from that, potentially less significant or less dramatic or less complex incident. so I do the idea that there's this area where there's a purity, and then there's this horrendously corrupt, Uh, so evil twin, uh, I think is again, a little bit complicated, uh, a little bit simplifying the distinction. but again, I think it comes down to a lot of it comes down to transparency. it, by the way, there's plenty of research in all across all of the, the various domains that, that, that isn't quickly published because of various restrictions. And that can be in academia or in, industry. I mean, obviously the goal is to publish as much as you can where especially where it's, you can generalize from the specific project. I think that's the, the biggest value. but then assuming that imperfection and assuming that it will be supplanted by something else, I think that's just good, humility and, And, and, and transparency is part of that process, I think cuz it allows you to be further scrutinized.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 27:31

Talking about the currency, what is the value of publication for you? Like? for me it's, it's very simple as an academic, it's impact factor or it's, we have a points in Poland that are, there's a list of 50,000 journals and it has a sound of point value. So, we, we joked that, did we, we gathered the points and we turned them into hotdogs in a petrol station from a cart. what's the vo like, like Mike, if you publish, as OFR what, what are you looking for? Uh, are you, are you looking for impact factors? Are you looking for another metric? Are you looking for accessibility, reputation, press, prestige.

Mike Spearpoint: 28:09

Yeah, it's a good question and I, and, and again, there's been a bit, I happened to be on the editorial board of Journal of Fire Sciences. and there has been a few emails between the editors, which I, I've half drafted. Never sent it back, but this discussion went, has been gone on there. And certainly, like you're saying within academic in administration, and I don't necessarily mean the universities, but sometimes it's governments now there they, they want to come up with a ranking system. So you can compare one department or one university with another. And they, and somewhere we've decided, or has been decided that impact factors is somehow some kind of measure of quality and whatever. And, you know, and I think a lot of us recognize both in industry and in academia, that this has fairly limited, applicability. But it, it's, you know, it's nice to get A scoring system because you know, you can rank A, a above B and so on. And certainly then for, for industry, I mean, and I'm sure Steve would, have a similar feeling, but impact cause we don't have, not in industry, have that scoring system then impact factor on a journal. Doesn't matter, and I'm not sure it's ever mattered to me. the, the impact factor of, of a journal. I mean, for me, the choice of journal is partly, you know, there's a whole bunch of factors that you might weigh and it, and it might be the audience you expect it to go to. It will be the perceived, quality of that journal. and, it might be the speed of publication. It might be the fact that they might have, open access. So in some cases, you know, if you are, if you are working for an industry and they want that information, fairly quickly published, then an open access journal, might be, or, or an open access pathway in that journal might seem as more valuable, uh, than some of these other factors. I mean, again, from, in, from industry, the concept of impact factor for some people probably is not something they've ever, they've ever heard of and, and it bothers them. so the choice of journal has all of these sorts of elements that, that go into it that, maybe, maybe I can come up with a scoring system for, why choose a certain journal, dare I be back perverse to come up with a scoring system of why to choose a certain journal in a certain, situation. I'll put weightings on all these factors and tell, and give each, each journal, each, uh, paper a score on why I chose it. Well, that would be, and put it in a high impact factor journal, just, just to close the loop. so, so the choice, the choice is not, I, I don't think it's a simple one. And if someone said to me, why did I choose that paper to go in that journal? I mean, some days it, it is simple as that. As the, I've sent three papers to journal A and maybe it's time I sent it to journal B. I mean, it might be just sharing it around type of thing, which maybe some might look at and say, that's a really poor decision making might, but,

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 30:57

if you, if you had to make a choice, like you, you, you are the research leader in your company, so I guess you have some say in, in where the people go or at at least you, you advise them. If you had in one hand, like let's say Fire Technology Fire Safety Journal on another hand. let's say some IEEE informatics conference, which may in the end have higher impact factor, but will not reach your fire audience. Would it, it matters for you that, that you publish in a place where your industry reads not necessarily just the metrics that represents the, vehicle where you publish it, right?

Steve Gwynne: 31:32

I think that, I think that's changed though a lot with social media. first of all, I mean, I think Mike and I both in pretty privileged positions in that we, I think, we're both encouraged to publish by, the companies. And that's because they didn't hire researchers as lip service. They actually wanted an ongoing research capability. And then part of this is demonstrating that, right? So there's value to the company in publishing because it shows they're actively engaged in this type of thing and this type of thinking. And they have in-house capabilities. in terms of where, This is the problem with those impacted factors, right? Is is I I wonder how accurate they are now in a lot of ways, because how do they capture the actual reading of these documents, and the actual influence? I've never paid, I've gotta be honest, a blind bit of notice to to impact factors. I'm more interested in the authors that I'm publishing with. I mean, I'm a very much a social butterfly when it comes to that. I want to, I wanna collaborate so I like to be working. I don't care wh where I'm in the author list, I don't, I'd rather as long as, as long as I'm contributing something and there's five or six people on the paper that, you know, I've got to learn something from, and that, that's great. And then, the, the company benefits because they contributed to the work and their staff are seen to be contributing to it, and they've advanced the field. And if you are in our game, there's great value in showing that you are. you know, it's another way of gently nudging both the understanding of the field and the way that the thing is done, right? So you are, you are advancing innovation in that way. So I think there's personal preferences. As I said, I look at the there's more than the, person you know, publishing it. the, the organization, I think, uh, benefits from ha enhancing that reputation of, new thinking and, and knowledge generation. and also that have those also, they, they, they have those connections as well. So rather than the people, the authors, the institutions to which those authors belong, there's, I think there's increasing value in having building those bridges between, different organizations and, you know, showing that you've been active on those research project.

Mike Spearpoint: 33:30

I think the notion that there's journals the industry reads, and again, I think Steve's mentioned that with social media and. And also, the, the internet. Um, I, I was kind of looking at this just for this, uh, other discussion. I don't, I don't have a kind of reading list of journals like I'm, you know, might have done in the old days of what, what got printed and sent to me or whatever. it'd be really interesting to sit down and look at all of the journals that I've cited and what, where they come from. And some of 'em will come from the main, what you might call the mainstream fire science. So Fire Safety Journal and Fire Technology and those, fire materials. Uh, some will come from the built environment, so, you know, a wider that. But I've got papers, know, given I've, dabbled in, in too many subjects and maybe I'm, as you know, guilty as the, as the next person about, not sticking to my knitting. I mean, I've got, you know, I've looked at papers. the stuff on occupant loads ended up looking at papers on, retail re consumer research and the stuff I did on kitchen oil fires. I looked at papers to do how many people dispose of their kitchen oil down there sink type of thing. So these are all way outside of, fire science stuff because they just happened to be what I was looking at. So, so this notion that there's some journals that people read and others they don't, I think it has disappeared because the internet and Google Scholar, all that sort of things means you just, you just search and you, and you find where you find it and you make a judgment. And again, there's this idea about quality of the journal and that, and, you know, and I don't know, I think a, a reasonable researcher can look at a paper and make a decision about the quality of the paper. And so, and so kind of, let's say independent of where it was published, I'm being a bit careful about that. Cause maybe that's not.

Steve Gwynne: 35:12

I, I think Mike, I think, and the reason I've mentioned this is because it's come up recently in, in some work I've been doing is, if all you did was search academic journals, if you were doing some, a search for information you'd miss out, especially in our field, all of the work that NIST did, a lot of the reports that NRC did, you know, all of the government publications wouldn't necessarily appear on that. There's lots of industry reports that wouldn't appear. there's lots of, I mean, some of the blogs that are on LinkedIn now or some of the, the, the pieces are, Actually well referenced and well documented, and there's some, it's a way of getting content out there now quite quickly. The problem with the journal publication process is c it can take a long time, look a really long

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 35:56

true. Yeah. Mike, Mike also mentioned that, that the speed of publication would be one of, of the factors. I'm asking about this, um, way, like if I receive a research grant as an academic, I have to point out some milestones and, and some outcomes of this. And these outcomes are usually, the easiest way to define it is I either trained a PhD student, I, I've promoted someone and, uh, that there's a growth of their career that's measurable by them obtaining PhD or I've published something which has a certain value of, like, these are simple, easy metrics like that are very measurable, very identifiable, very obvious. Like you have a publication. It's a publication. There's no gray zone in that. Did you make an impact on industry? Hmm. That's, that's gray zone. So I wonder like doing industrial led research, like what indicators would be there that, that you've actually achieved? That if, if paper on its own is not the achievement of, of it.

Steve Gwynne: 36:56

Yeah, it's, it's an interesting one as I said before, not all, not all of any research is done can be published. There's, there's always bits that are more sensitive or for, for various reasons, can't be published. But assuming you can publish it, to me, the ultimate impact of industrial. Again, industrial research beyond the lifetime of a project, is to get into the regulatory or guidance space, right? Because that means that you've generated something that is sufficient to have an impact on the broader practice beyond your organization. So gestures, it's, and it's absolutely pragmatic, right? It's absolutely applied. but it's, one line in the building code, can have a much bigger impact than 10 articles that no one reads, whereas someone's got to use that one line. or providing a material base for the development of regulations. So to me that, that's always, if you think of it as like you've got subject matter experts who are engaged in practice or, and, and or research. And what they're all trying to do in one way or another is either do something to such a high level that they're noticed for doing it in a new way that's advanced the field of practice, or they're doing it in research where they've expanded the understanding, and or the area of knowledge that that then bleeds into the field of practice. Eventually, someone is gonna develop a guide to, say, well, this is how you do that. This is how it should be done based on that new, practice or new research. And, and then eventually, of course, beyond that, it's okay, this is how it must be done. So, to me that's the, a signal, that your novel work inside of your practice is having a broader influence beyond the day to day or beyond the life of a project. And it's where you are shaping the space.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 38:42

you took it, the phrase outta my mouth, like shaping the environment. Like you really did change the landscape in which you, make business, Mike, for your company, you, you're sticking the same, I mean, you are in a very interesting position because I know OFR is carrying a lot of government, research like where the, the government is directly your consumer and, they, give you, they, they tell you what research to do.

Mike Spearpoint: 39:06

Yeah, so we've got some, government funded research and, and, and one of those projects that I'm doing jointly with Steve, it's one of the ones I mentioned. and so they've got certain, goals for, doing that research. And I, and I suppose when I worked, my, my first job, um, when I worked at Fire Research Station, BRE, I mean obviously there, that some of that money came from government, departments, I mean, know, I can think of one where, we were asked to look at a piece of um, there were two different, standards for smoke detectors, for commercial ones and for domestic. And part of the work was, should there be one standard for this? You know, so it would've had an impact, on the types of, on the testing of those devices, which, which, you know, was sponsored as I remember, by a government department because obviously that had a, a societal impact on whether that standard be, be changed or not. But I mean, from a, shall I get on a personal point of view, I remember having a discussion not that long ago with one of my colleagues about how much my research that I've been involved with has had an impact. And I, and I kind of struggled. I dunno if it's had any impact at all. But what is that impact? Some, someone might say, well, if you could demonstrate that all your researchers as we might say sort of saved a life, then you kind of think it's all all worth it. But it's really hard Um, so it's really difficult cuz I, cuz I was saying to this colleague, I was saying, well, maybe sometimes I think, well, none, none of it's made any difference. but then, then this colleague sort of said, well, it may made a difference. It may have influence people to get into fire research or, or influenced and to get involved with something. And I go, well, yeah, it goes, I guess that's an impact in a way, that someone's read something of mine. I know you thought that was useful or it was a completely wrong way to do it. And the better way was to do it another way. You know, as Steve said, some researchers might point to, a, a better method. And so that influences. kind of said someone don't do it Mike's way cause that's the rubbish way

Steve Gwynne: 41:03

I, I was, that's what I was gonna say is, is I've, I, I've had the other experience where I've just had someone randomly come up to me at a conference and start arguing with me, like on meeting me because of a paper that Mike and I worked on many years ago on, on model defaults. And, and they were fairly furious at what we'd spoken And so it definitely influenced their next paper, cuz I think they were quite critical of what we'd written. But, so, No, I, I, the thing is you don't know. You don't know what the impact is. Right. And that's, I'm not, I'm not that prolific, but it's like you, you see, I've seen quotes from the most obscure paper that I ever wrote or whatever, and they're, they're holding it as like a bit of evidence that then used to contribute for their work. And it's like, it was a Korean researcher and they spoke to me at a conference. It was like that, that was really useful for me cuz it meant, I, not that it was anything profound, but it just meant they, that was a little stepping stone that led them to something else. And I'd included stuff in my reference list. See, you never know where it becomes useful, I would say. going back to usefulness and, uh, I think the reason for doing stuff as well, oftentimes, again, again, I, I do think the assumption is slightly naive that, you know, if you are in one space, like an academic space, you have control over what you are doing. You have much more purity In selecting what you look at. And we all need funding. And that funding comes from a body, and that body has decided that something is important and needs to be looked at. And that is usually determined by a com combination of stakeholders. government industry has advocacy groups, whatever it is. And we were very much subject to that when I was in Gov working in government. But to me, a classic example, maybe it's unique, but it makes the point is what happened during the pandemic, right? Everyone suddenly had to turn left and do things in that, or not everyone, but many of us would, would said, okay, you're gonna stop looking at that thing and you're gonna turn left and work out why social distancing matters, or what impact that might have. And so basically all of the machinery. that was normally focused on these, this unbelievably complicated and addressing all these different topics, just went, everyone's gonna look in that direction because it's basically shut society down. And so it was an example, the reason I mentioned it is cuz an example of the fact that we often, we are quite reactive to needs in that the either industry, has, has to address on a project by project basis or research addresses, know, given the funding that's available. It's quite rare I think that someone genuinely stands up and says, I've got this idea that's so important, I want a dedicated bit of funding for it. it's typically much more influenced by what's going on and it, or, or, you know, not necessarily at that moment, but over a period of time.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 43:44

if, if someone from inside your company came to you and said, Steve, I have this idea, it's not something we can immediately employ, but I think it's. it could be eventually important. I don't know. I need to research that.

Steve Gwynne: 43:59

They, they literally do that

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 44:00

you, would you go for that?

Steve Gwynne: 44:01

literally, well that's literally an ongoing process. Right. So to me, there's different types of research projects. There's like a research offer. We do research for external entities and we deliver research outcome. So that's, that's one type of project. And then there's, there are relatively complex people, movement projects where we, it requires us to do research in order to facilitate those projects to be delivered for an external stadium or, an event or something like that. But then there are other things that come up as part of that where an internal consultant, uh, might say, look, I'm, I've come up with these ideas that might be using a, developing a tool that's being developed in a new way or being used in a new way, or is giving insights in a new way. And I don't, I'm not sure I've seen this before. a, is it genuine research that we could enhance or develop as part of the company, or might it even be a value beyond that and the, and then we would take it outside if there's, if it warrants it. So that sort of discussion is sort of, and I'm, I'm sure it's similar to Mike. It is, is it is a sort of our bread and butter. It's, is actually what it is. And it, but, and by the way, and this is another misnomer before I by to shut up, I'm never, ever, ever the smartest person in the room. The idea that because you've got a PhD inevitably means your IQ is higher than the consultants in the room. It just means you've been doing something long enough. to develop a, a sufficient insight into that one thing. throw that out the window, you know, that, that you, again, it comes back to humility, right? I've been shouted at enough of conferences by smarter people than me to know that I'm limited. But the idea that consultant or practice or industry isn't just chock full of super smart, hard work and people, who are, you know, not always motivated purely by, by finance, uh, is, is just not not true.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 45:51

And, how would you rank the ability to pursue science at industry? Like, to what extent it's different from academia. Like you, you both have been, uh, previously employed in, in some sort of, uh, laboratories, academia. Steve, you are now in l Mike, you were at Christchurch. is there an very, like, direct difference between how you did research as a researcher in the university versus how you do in your company?

Mike Spearpoint: 46:19

What? What do you mean by science? I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Yeah. Yeah, because yeah. I'm not sure whether I've ever done science

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 46:27

I'm, I'm using research in science almost, uh, a synonymous, it's, it's hard to even define what science is. I, I guess that's the increase of the, knowledge of the humanity and, and everything that, that goes towards this, this

Steve Gwynne: 46:42

Yeah, I think that's more research cuz you can do research without necessarily strictly following the scientific method, I'm guessing. But I mean, I've, let's, let's not, this, not, let's not get into that cuz that is a, that is a, that's three other conversations. Um, okay. Sorry Mike. Anyway. You were, you were,

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 46:56

But the capability of doing research as, as a researcher do you, do you see like any significant differences? Like, uh, no. It was easier. It was hard.

Mike Spearpoint: 47:06

I'd it's different, right? So you've got different, you've got different drivers. So for example, you've got the driver of a university wanting publications and reputation and those sorts of things. And that, you know, that, Canterbury, They have the assessment system I, it's called now, but they're the, here in the uk I think it's the r a e thing. So you've got your scoring and of course there's a, a metric, a kpi, whatever. So you are, you are somewhat, driven by that um, obviously got students and you are driven by, their interests and their capabilities and that sort of thing. So sometimes, like, you're directed because of those, and you are, and there's resources as well. So I was very, very fortunate, to have laboratory facilities at the University of Canterbury, which have expanded since I left. But I had a, a couple of really good technicians who I could go and chat to and build a, build a widget. And we had a lab and we, and we could do things, which I, I can't do now. I've got no lab in that, so was it easier before, or, Uh, it's different. Canterbury. Now, when I was doing my masters at, at Maryland, the way of engaging technicians to build things was different. They had a, as I recall, a more central resource. So, so was, uh, slightly more complicated, one might say, to get something built there because you have to go to the central resource rather than having someone who you could just go and walk down the, to the lab and say, can you build me a so and so? And they'll go, yeah, I can world it like this, and I'll get it for you to dun for tomorrow if you need tomorrow. I go, well, next week's great. So, i I can't say what was easier or, or harder because it, it depends. It, it's, it's different.

Steve Gwynne: 48:41

Yeah, but the differences can be quite subtle Right. And very much sensitive to where you are. I think some academic spaces could be extremely hierarchical. and you were, your direction is governed by the, the group or the, the department or the, you know, the, the focus of the subject matter focus there. And, and of course, availability of funding. so in government it was more like someone comes in with a problem. Someone from the public comes in with a problem that then determines whether your unit has to provide some evidence and generates some research to work out what's going on. So that was quite reactive, I think. But again, lots of resources, labs and access, access to lots of, of building facilities that we would never have had access to in industry. I think the great resource we've got is just a lot of people that can do the thing. So there's a lot of consultants, practitioners, who are not. Um, this is by no means a criticism. They're not, uh, new students coming through, but they're practiced in the field. And so where the, where there's value to, for an old researcher that I include all Mike and myself in there is, is that they become unbelievably useful resources. So they are and, and willing resources who know the f they know enough about practice to know what, how the data that you are collecting might be used. And so of course you still have to have that research overview and you still have to have a structure and methodology that that can be attacked, academically and in peer review. they have then become a huge resource in actually doing the research activity. And so, I think that's what's astonished me. And again, we, we were involved in the, the pandemic work and we deployed tens of people into the field, dozens of people into the field. That would've been very tricky if it had just been a university doing it. We just wouldn't have had the numbers of people capable of doing that. So, you know, there are very few departments that large, you know, that you could just manifest. 10, 20 people to go into the field and do a, an observation. So, I think it's complicated. I don't think it's necessarily different in one particular way. I think it's very much sensitive to the institution, the academic institution and the, industrial institution, the government space you're working in. as I say, I think the main difference is often the speed of delivery, speed of turnaround, and the, the resources available, to do that. but I dunno if that's constant between the three, uh, domains, if you like.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 51:09

I, I think it's a very interesting discussion and it's clearly showing, like to anyone wondering if, If you go to to industry, you will be thrown on, on endless loop of similar commercial projects, endlessly. There, there there's also a pathway in industry where you can do interesting research, maybe, maybe the most interesting research and, and focus on the meaningful aspects of that research rather than, uh, struggling, on which journal to choose or which, impact factor metric you, you have to achieve. That's tr that's a trap in academia. Sometimes people also they would, uh, ha have, this view that academia is ultimately good or, or a beautiful fantastic place where you do research, uh, enjoying yourself, smiling in the lab while there, there's like, there's a reason why 70% of postdocs have a depression and,

Steve Gwynne: 52:00

Well, it can be, not a very collegiate place, right? Because it's very competitive. The idea that academia's not competitive, I think is, there's long, long gone, I think. But, I do think, the downside on a, if you are, if you are a careerist, if you're really interested in climbing the ladder, operating in more than one space can certainly mean that you don't focus on those metrics within a space that really matter. And so, you know, if you wanna get on in certain universities, then you have to hit certain publications and you have to cl you know, you have to really focus in on, on those things. And being more of a generalist in terms of the domains in which you work means you just don't focus on that. You're, you are looking at multiple impacts across domains and so you are never gonna be as successful necessarily

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 52:47

by this metric.

Steve Gwynne: 52:48

yeah. By each metric. That's right. You are, you are, you are, you've got like a, a seven out of 10 across three different metrics rather than a 10 out of 10 on one. And so you have to be able to swallow that a little bit that, that the people will race past you in one. you know, there were people that were colleagues of mine that have just gone way beyond me in out the academic scale or indeed way beyond me in the, in the industrial hierarchy. Um, that's just how it is. that's just, that's just the nature of it. And they, they were better than me anyway, but that's not the point if I was equivalent to them, I wouldn't have gone so far if, because of the part, the, the, the more complicated path of, of being one thing inside another thing.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 53:28

From my, my side, I wanted to do this episodes to see how the. Other ladder looks like I, I know how the ladder of career in academia looks like. I, I think I understand how the research is, is done in here. And then I see people from this other ladder, from industry making true impact making research that's, that's groundbreaking. I wanted to, to understand why they would be making it and, why it is, very attractive for industry to put own money on the table and, and do research. And, and I also think it's fundamental for the growth of this discipline for multiple reasons. one, the, the funding to shaping the environment and, and knowing the problems. Three, having access to this, what you just said, Steve, the, Amount of people, the, the tools, being able to focus in your efforts, and change your, goals as you grow. I, I guess you also have bigger, uh, ability to do that when you are driving your own research. So yeah, it's, it's, it is, it's been a very interesting discussion,

Steve Gwynne: 54:30

I'm, I'm constantly embarrassed by how good and how hardworking my colleagues are. like there's no sense of. I'll come up with something, I'll in a discussion and I'll say, oh, this tool would be useful or this bit of work. And one of my colleagues will have done it because it's, they're in industrial part, consultants. So they, and they'll have done it because it's something of interest. And the idea that and, you know, this is in an engineering environment of course, but they're, they're, they, they're interested in the thing. They want to do it. It's not just about getting on and some sort of rat race style. Uh, I think they actually want to, they're as interested in the topic as I am, and they just happen to be 28 and able to work all of the current tools that are available. I'm willing to dive in and do the thing. And so, yeah, I'm, I'm, I have to be careful what I say because it will be, someone will pick it up and run with it. So I, I it's, it's the opposite problem. Yeah, exactly.

Mike Spearpoint: 55:26

I think, yeah, I think it's interesting that it's very DES census sort of again, this sort of U utilitarianism that people. People do it because they, cuz they're told to it and they're paid to do it and that's the only reason they do it. But people do all sorts of things. look at all the stuff that people work in open source software and, and they do it as a hobby and they do it as, because people are are interested in it and sometimes they do it because it in intellectually engages them and they're interested and and all those things. And, some might say, why do I do research and why do, and for me it's, part of it is to do with that intellectual engagement. And I think Steve's already talked about the fact that you can work with other people and, share that research pathway. I mean, do doing it songs by yourself is not, is not that interesting cuz it's just when you've got someone else to bounce ideas off and, and discuss it and they'll, you know, they'll challenge you and whatever that in itself can be a reason, to do it. Because it, Engages something in you that that, that you want to engage in. and no, I'm not gonna get into it. You know, why, why one does fire research and, is it just the process of research rather than the particular topic? and for some people it might be the topic of is of interest. Some people it's just the, the intellectual engagement in something, irrespective of what the, the, the topic is. So I think there's all sorts of things that, that, that people. Do things and yeah, they need to, you know, earn money and, and pay a bill. I, I, you know, I expect some people do it because they want to, be seen to be an expert in something. They, they get something out of that as a measure of their, uh, success. And people like to have measures of success and some people's measures of success. And you see it for you, maybe for, for billionaires now it's just the fact that they, I dunno, I'm not a billionaire. I never will be, but maybe they don't, they don't earn money to, to, to, as a way of, so they can buy more stuff. It's a scoring system. they can measure their success against another billionaire. and maybe, you know, some people in, in research do it for publishing papers as a measure of their success. a metric. I spec, you know, humans are, is an element of, of metric, you know, we do it, we know sport, you know, it's a measure of metric. Uh, is, is that, is my team better than your team? Can I run faster than someone else? What, what's the utility of it? Well, the utility is, There's a human competition in us. You know, it's survival of the fittest net. Um, those sorts of things that drive us.

Steve Gwynne: 57:53

I don't, I don't think that it's not a, a neutral process. Like, you know, publishing and sharing and being, it's uncomfortable, right? Because you are being scrutinized. and so it's not trivial. I mean, I, one thing, I, I enjoy the process of working with people on papers. I really enjoy it. uh, but within the topics in which I have something to contribute, you know, I'm not, uh, it's not just a let's solve a challenge. That's not that, or that's, it's the challenge of it. It's not like a word or exercise to me. I wanna do something that produces something of use. But, it's uncomfortable. P publishing for me is uncomfortable because at the end of it, someone's gonna read it and they might really disagree and they might find something that they can tell you and say, well, you should have done it this way. And then you think, oh, blind me. I should have done it that way. , they were, they're right. so, so, It's not a trivial exercise. It's not a, it's not a trivial thing in of a marketing exercise for your own, pursuit. I think it can be very, know, tough and, and, uh, so yeah, I mean, but I do agree with Mike in that, you know, that people have different motivations. I think, the easiest one is just to, adage of doing no harm is definitely a good starting place, but, um, I'm trying, not trying to, and that, but that's non-trivial. I mean, cuz you don't know how your work's gonna be used,

Mike Spearpoint: 59:04

Yeah.

Steve Gwynne: 59:04

work can be flipped over and, and, the phrasing can be used or in a different way or something.

Mike Spearpoint: 59:10

I've seen that. Like saying you dunno how it's, how it's gonna be used. A lot of time. you don't find out. Again, it was useful. I mean, you can find out when people have, can go to your, your Google Scholar and see how many citations you've got, and you get account. What you don't know is whether, unless you go and read the paper, they're citation, although most of 'em don't, might say, work by Spearpoint citation is a load of rubbish. You know, you don't, you don't get.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 59:33

a citation.

Mike Spearpoint: 59:34

It's a citation, but, but you dunno where it gets used elsewhere. And, and I do remember at least one time when, one of my students at Canterbury had done a, a thesis or something and, and it goes and we, we published those as PDFs and then I got an email maybe a year later from a, from a consultancy company, it said, oh, that's a really nice thesis. It's been really useful. And it's nice just to get the sense that, that someone actually found it useful. Now, I wouldn't have found out had I not got the email, but someone took the time to at least sort of recognize that there was some value in that. And you know, that's kind of. Nice because it is scary, scary publishing. I agree with Steve. It's scary. I'm scared because it will show how, how incompetent I am at something. I've made mistakes or whatever. Because you are, we're all limited. You know, we're all limited by our, capability to do something. In other words, you know, I can read a paper or read something and go, I just don't understand it cause I'm just not clever enough. and there's only so many hours in the day to, to, you know, there's always that feeling of, I should have read more papers, I should have read, I should have dived into this more and dug into it. But, you can't do it. And you always think, well, maybe I missed something. You know, maybe I've, turned over all these stones, but I just didn't turn over the right one. And had I only spent another day and had I only spent a bit longer, I would've found something. The , oh, wait a minute. Oh, that's really, and someone else will send me an email and go, didn't you read the paper by Soandso? And, and I go, no, I didn't. I just didn't know it was there. I didn't look right.

Steve Gwynne: 1:01:00

But that's so healthy, right. That that doubt is healthy. because if you don't have that doubt, then you can get into a lot of trouble because you, you think you've got the answer and almost certainly you A there isn't a, an answer and b, you probably haven't got it So if there was, um, but one, one thing, bringing it back to the, industrial element, I think, which is, goes to what Mike's saying there, which is you often don't know in a purely research setting. While we, we, you know, and again, I don't think we operate in that realm. You really don't know what the impact of a piece of work might be in a lot of the work that we do in industry. I think the, the horizon's nearer so you have a chance of affecting something almost within the life cycle of a project. unless you're doing more traditional research from with, within industry, which we definitely do as well, but sometimes you see the positives and negatives of your work right in front of you and, that's a different sensation. You, you know, you answer that, that doubt that Mike's talking about there, which is what would the impact of your, knowledge, what would the impact of your findings on this thing that's being built or this thing? I did some work years ago on the Statue of Liberty, and it was very much that, you know, what, what, is it gonna reopen or not? Is it gonna, it, you know, you often, you often work on projects and there's there's a modification to a building and you think, I hope that that works. I hope that that, you know, I hope that that that bit of a research that we did in support of this engineering project was, the best that we could have done.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 1:02:24

Okay, guys, I, I need to stop you there. I can imagine you can go for like, another five hours of that

Steve Gwynne: 1:02:31

this is every meeting with me and Mike.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 1:02:33

it, it has been super interesting conversation, uh, with, industry experts, who are researchers who claim to not do science, but they actually do science. Mike, you, you are doing science. Um, I'm sorry, I'm, I'm sorry. You are. guys, thank you very much for, for this, I hope it was interesting, uh, to, to, to people, to researchers. I, I hope it was interesting to the, to the society. I guess people are either gonna hate or love this episode. Uh, we'll, we'll, we'll see.

Mike Spearpoint: 1:03:03

Well, ironically, we might may or never find out because

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 1:03:06

we might not

Mike Spearpoint: 1:03:08

that was awful, but maybe they send me, can send me an email that says I, I listened to it and it awful. At least I know it was awful. Then

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 1:03:16

Okay. If you, if you founded this episode, awful, please send an email to Mike. In other case, send it to me or Steve

Mike Spearpoint: 1:03:22

it was good.

Steve Gwynne: 1:03:23

you go. I only, I only wanna hear

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 1:03:25

Yeah, same here, Okay guys, thank you. Thank you so much for being here with me and, have a, have a great year 2023, because I assume it just started

Steve Gwynne: 1:03:37

Take care, everyone.

Mike Spearpoint: 1:03:38

Thank you. Cheers.

Wojciech Węgrzyński: 1:03:40

And the suits and I thank you for listening. I hope we didn't bore you down with our amateur philosophy thinking stuff but I was very happy to be engaged in such a discussion with Mike and Steve. who are industry legends? It was pure pleasure to, to hear their thoughts about why. We do research and how we do research and how this one do research in academia. How one does do research in industry? Very intriguing. And, I think the differences are. Much smaller than I've expected them to be. I don't think we found a single massive discrepancy in how would you run? Uh, researcher in one party or another. We didn't touch that much. Utilitarian aspects of research as in product development And all R and D um, research happening around, but maybe that's a subject for another discussion. Anyway, thank you very much for listening to this podcast episode. I really hope you've enjoyed it. Thanks a lot to OFR, for sponsoring the show. Once again. Super happy to have OFR as the diamond sponsor of the Fire Science Show. And then the collaboration that's gonna last for at least one year. At that makes me very, very happy. And that was before today. It's not the end of the podcast in this week because there's an upcoming Q and A episode. I think it should air on Friday if I miss it, it maybe Monday, but I'll do anything I can to have it published on Friday. So you'll learn a lot about the listener experience servi and my observations from that. And I will. Tell you what you're thinking about the podcast. So that's very exciting and they will also share more details about the. OFR Collaboration and how it's gonna. Affect the podcast and everything I'm doing in here. So, uh, if you're interested in the podcast itself, You're very welcome to join me. And if you're interested just in the great discussions with, leaders of the industry, you're very welcome. next wednesday, when I'm having Dr. Adam Barowy from UL FSRI to talk about battery fires again. So cool. Really happy to do the subject again. And it was a great conversation. Cannot wait to publish that one. So thanks for being here with me. See again on Friday, Monday or Wednesday. And, yeah, have a good week. Cheers. Bye.