Faculty photo

Departments

Education

  • Ph.D., The University of Texas at Austin, 2012 
  • M.S., Georgia Institute of Technology, 2006 
  • B.S., The University of Texas at Austin, 2004 

Research interests

  • Material flammability 
  • Fire modeling 
  • Waste gasification  

Biography

Morgan Bruns is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. He received a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 2012 where he studied the thermal decomposition of plastics in applications such as ablative heat shields and flammability. He obtained his bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin and his master’s degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology. 

After graduate school, Bruns went to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Maryland, as a National Research Council postdoctoral associate. After completion of his postdoctoral fellowship, he stayed at NIST as a mechanical engineer in the Fire Research Division where he worked on many projects such as material property determination, fire modeling, the fire resistance of gypsum wallboard, the ignition propensity of cigarettes and the fire hazard associated with residential upholstered furniture. 

Bruns left NIST in 2018 when he accepted a position as Assistant Professor at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in Lexington, Virginia. While at VMI, he developed an undergraduate level course in computational fluid dynamics and continued his research in fire safety engineering. 

Bruns joined the faculty at St. Mary’s University in Fall of 2021. He remains active in the fire research community as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Fire Sciences, and through his service on the organizing committee on the International Association of Fire Safety Science (IAFSS) Measurement and Computation of Fire Phenomena (MaCFP) workshop.  

Bruns greatly appreciates the family-spirited atmosphere of the St. Mary’s community. He continually looks forward to working with students to understand the basics of mechanical engineering as a tool for making the world a better place, particularly with regards to energy and fire safety. 

Publications

Bruns, M.C. and Leventon, I., “Automated Fitting of Thermogravimetric Analysis Data”, Fire and Materials, Vol. 45, No. 3, 2020, pp. 406-414.  

Brown, A., Bruns, M., Gollner, M., Hewson, J., Maragkos, G., Marshall, A., McDermott, R., Merci, B., Rogaume, T., Stoliarov, S., Torero, J., Trouve, A., Wang, Y., and Weckman, E., “Proceedings of the First Workshop Organized by the IAFSS Working Group on Measurement and Computation of Fire Phenomena (MaCFP), Fire Safety Journal, Vol. 101, 2018, pp. 1-17.  

Bruns, M.C., “Estimating the Flashover Probability of Residential Fires Using Monte Carlo Simulations of the MQH Correlation”, Fire Technology, Vol. 54, No. 1, 2018, pp. 187-210.  

Bruns, M.C., “Inferring and Propagating Kinetic Parameter Uncertainty for Condensed Phase Burning Models”, Fire Technology, Vol. 52, No. 1, 2016, pp. 93-120.  

Bruns, M.C. and Ezekoye, O.A., “Modeling Differential Scanning Calorimetry of Thermally Degrading Thermoplastics”, Journal of Analytical and Applied Pyrolysis, Vol. 105, 2014, pp. 241-251.  

Bruns,M.C.andEzekoye,O.A.,”DevelopmentofaHybridSectionalQuadrature-BasedMethod for Solving Population Balance Equations”, Journal of Aerosol Science, Vol. 54, 2012, pp. 88-102.  

Smith, K.D., Bruns, M.C., Stoliarov, S.I., Nyden, M.R., Ezekoye, O.A., and Westmoreland, P.R., “Assessing the Effect of Molecular Weight on the Kinetics of Backbone Scission Reactions in Polyethylene using Reactive Molecular Dynamics”, Polymer, Vol. 52, No. 14, 2011, pp. 3104- 3111.  

Koo, J.H., Nguyen, K.C., Lee, J.C., Ho, W.K., Bruns, M.C., and Ezekoye, O.A., “Flammability Studies of a Novel Class of Thermoplastic Elastomer Nanocomposites”, Journal of Fire Sciences, Vol. 28, No. 1, 2010, pp. 49-85.  

Bruns, M.C., Koo, J.H., and Ezekoye, O.A., “Population-based Models of Thermoplastic Degradation Using Optimization to Determine Model Parameters”, Polymer Degradation and Stability, Vol. 94, 2009, pp. 1013-1022.

Back to top