Weiyong Wang is a professor and director in the Institute of Safety & Disaster Prevention Engineering of College of Civil Engineering at the Chongqing University (CQU). He received his Ph.D. from Tongji University, China in June 2008. From March to July in 2010, he worked as a visiting professor sponsored by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) in Tokyo University of Science (TUS), Japan. From January to November in 2011, He worked for Professor Kodur Venkatesh as a research associate in Michigan State University (MSU), USA. From May 2014 to September in 2015, he worked as a visiting scholar sponsored by China Scholarship Council (CSC) in University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin), USA. Venkatesh Kodur is Professor and Chair person in the department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, and also serves as Director of the Center on Structural Fire Safety and Diagnostics at the Michigan State University (MSU). He received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from Queen’s University, Canada in 1988 and 1992, respectively. Dr. Kodur's research has focused on the experimental behaviour and analytical modelling of structural systems under extreme fire conditions; Constitutive modelling of material properties at elevated temperatures, developing guidelines for fire resistance design of structural systems, Evaluating fire performance of high performing materials; Performance based fire safety design, Non-linear design and analysis of structures, Failure investigations. He has collaborated closely with various industries, funding agencies and international organizations and developed simplified design approaches for evaluating fire resistance, and innovative and cost-effective solutions for enhancing fire-resistance of structural systems. Many of these design approaches and fire resistance solutions have been incorporated in to various codes and standards (NBC, ACI, ASCE, SFPE). He has published over 300 peer-reviewed papers in international journals and conferences in structural, material and fire resistance areas and has given numerous invited key-note presentations. He is a professional engineer, Fellow of Canadian Academy of Engineering, Foreign Fellow on Indian National Academy of engineers, Fellow of ASCE and Fellow of ACI and member of SFPE. He serves as Associate Editor of Journal of Structural Engineering and Journal of Structural Fire Engineering, Chairman of ASCE Standards Committee on Fire Resistance, Chairman of ACI-TMS Committee 216 on Fire Protection and a member of EPSRC (UK) College of Reviewers. He has won many awards including AISC Faculty Fellowship Award for innovation in structural steel design and construction (2007), NRCC outstanding achievement award (2003) and NATO award for collaborative research. Dr. Kodur was part of the FEMA/ASCE Building Performance Assessment Team that studied the collapse of WTC buildings as a result of September 11 incidents.