NIST’s Alex Maranghides Receives Service to America Medal

Alexander Maranghides of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) was named a 2025 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal honoree for his groundbreaking research on protecting people and buildings from wildfires. The award recognizes Maranghides for 25 years of work investigating devastating wildfires in the United States and creating actionable guidelines on how to save lives and property in future fires.

The medal is awarded by the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit organization that recognizes federal employees for exemplary work in making America “better, safer, and stronger.” These prestigious awards are commonly known as “Sammies” and are widely considered to be the public service equivalent of the Oscars. Only around 30 honorees are selected each year out of two million federal employees.

“For more than two decades, Alex has demonstrated an unmatched ability to identify the most important lessons from wildfires,” said Joannie Chin, director of NIST’s Engineering Laboratory. “He then uses a variety of tools to convey these lessons to state and local officials in ways that they can understand the problem and develop solutions tailored to protect their communities.”

Many important questions emerge after a wildfire destroys a community. Why did one house survive unscathed while its neighbors burned to the ground? Did emergency warnings reach people in time for them to evacuate? What caused the fire to spread? Answering each of these questions could save lives in the next wildfire, but finding those answers is a serious undertaking. Maranghides’ most recent investigation, the 2018 Camp Fire in California, involved interviewing hundreds of firefighters, creating detailed minute-to-minute maps of the disaster, and running full-scale laboratory experiments. The final report is more than 1,000 pages long.

But Maranghides and his collaborators went further than simply describing what happened; they took the lessons they learned to people who need to hear them, condensing decades of research into practical advice. Community outreach was a critical component of the team’s two biggest projects: Hazard Mitigation Methodology (HMM) and Evacuation and Sheltering Considerations — Assessment, Planning, and Execution (ESCAPE). “Those two programs are the most important work I’ve done over my career,” explained Maranghides.

HMM contains clear guidance and instructions for how to prevent a wildfire from spreading. It includes advice such as how to prevent embers from getting in your attic and how far a woodpile should be kept from other houses. ESCAPE is a practical guide for how to prepare for wildfire sheltering and evacuation. It describes how emergency planners can prepare lifesaving decisions ahead of time and take simple steps to prepare refuge areas as a last resort if evacuation becomes impossible.

Both programs are beginning to be implemented in communities with a high risk of fire. As wildfires increase in frequency and severity, Maranghides’ research and outreach will save lives.

This research is part of NIST’s longstanding effort to understand and prepare communities for natural hazards such as hurricanes, earthquakes and tornadoes. NIST researchers Marc Levitan and Long Phan received a Sammie award last year for helping to create the first building codes for tornadoes. As a leader in researching natural hazards, NIST helps ensure a more resilient nation.

Samuel J. Heyman Service to America honorees are chosen by a selection committee composed of leaders from government, business, charitable organizations, academia, entertainment and media. For further information, visit the Service to America website.