Birgitte Messerschmidt is Director, Research, National Fire Protection Association. She is responsible for NFPA’s Research Strategy, Research on fire problems and other safety issues, Data collection efforts to maintain NFPA’s fire incident and fire service databases and the NFPA Research library. She has a M. Sc. In Civil Engineering from the Technical University of Denmark and has spent her entire career working on fire safety issues. Making our built environment more resilient to fire through better understanding of the impact of construction products and methods, as well as testing procedures and policy has been a career long passion. She has been involved in testing and research as well as standardization and advocacy. She has published and presented numerous papers on fire safety issues.