Investing in the next generation
Scholarships
Each year the IAWF awards two graduate-level scholarships, each valued at $3,000 USD, to members studying wildland fire — one Master’s and one Doctoral recipient, chosen by an international panel of fire science experts.
How it works
Two scholarships, every year, since 2007
The scholarship application period is now closed. Check back next spring.
We encourage applications from students studying any aspect of wildland fire — physical, ecological, or social science, and less traditional subject areas as well: this scholarship recognizes and supports any type of research relevant to the global wildland fire community. Scholarships are awarded to the top MSc and top PhD applicants based on the student’s submitted essay. You must be an IAWF member to apply.
The IAWF has been presenting this award annually to members of the fire science community since 2007.
At a glance
The IAWF graduate scholarships
$3,000
USD per scholarship
2
Awards each year — one MSc, one PhD
2007
Presented annually since
2026 recipient — PhD
Mayowa George · Kansas State University
Mayowa George is a PhD student and Graduate Research Assistant in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering at Kansas State University. His research focuses on wildfire prevention, prescribed burning management, fire danger modeling, and environmental sustainability, with an emphasis on grassland ecosystems in the Great Plains.
His current work develops and evaluates a localized Grassland Fire Danger Index (GFDI) for the Great Plains — integrating fuel moisture, vegetation condition, temperature, and long-term drought indicators, with dead fuel moisture and grass curing sub-models to improve wildfire risk prediction and support safer prescribed burning. He also serves as National Secretary/Treasurer of the Student Association for Fire Ecology (SAFE).
2026 recipient — MSc
Henry (Harry) Gilson · University of Cape Town
An environmental scientist and wildland firefighter raised on a farm in the Western Cape of South Africa, Harry found a passion for fire management with the Volunteer Wildfire Services in Cape Town and has pursued experience with BC Wildfire Service in Canada.
His MSc thesis develops a predictive framework for losses from Extreme Wildfire Events — a GIS-based, AHP-weighted framework integrating hazard, exposure, and socio-economic vulnerability in Western Cape wildland-urban interface communities, treating vulnerability as the central lens in a part of the world where wildfire research severely lacks funding.
Recipient archive
Recent scholarship recipients
A community of researchers the association is proud to have backed.
2025 — Javier Freire Herrera (PhD) & Shyloh van Delft (MSc)
Javier Freire Herrera, PhD Candidate in Environmental Health Sciences, UC Berkeley, studies the effects of extreme heat and air pollution on the health of wildland firefighters in Chile — wearable-sensor field measurements across active suppression, training, and routine work, plus a survey of 357 firefighters. A Fulbright scholar, he has assessed the physical conditions of Chilean wildland firefighters annually since 2010 as University of Concepción faculty.
Shyloh van Delft, MSc student in Wildlife Ecology & Management, University of Alberta in partnership with Yukon University, researches how wildfire mitigation strategies — FireSmart, shelterwood, partial retention harvesting — affect tree-cavity-using species in the Yukon’s boreal forest, in collaboration with Yukon Wildland Fire Management, Ta’an Kwäch’än Council, Kwanlin Dün First Nation, and other partners.
2024 — Marie Claire Aravena Acuña (PhD) & Harrison Raine (MSc)
Marie Claire Aravena Acuña, PhD student at the National University of La Plata, Argentina, investigates the effects of wildfires on Sphagnum peatlands in Tierra del Fuego — functional ecology of fire-damaged peatlands and their role as carbon sinks — based at CADIC-CONICET in Ushuaia.
Harrison Raine, dual master’s student at UC Berkeley (City Planning; Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning) and six-season USFS firefighter, studies wildfire risk in mobile home parks — affordable housing with disproportionate rates of wildfire loss in California’s recent seasons.
2023 — Stella Mosher (PhD) & Elise Brown-Dussault (MSc)
Stella Mosher, PhD candidate in Geography, University of Utah, reconstructs fire histories at ~2-year intervals over the past 4,200 years in South Africa’s fire-adapted Fynbos Biome — climate-vegetation-fire-human linkages from the onset of pastoralism to fire suppression since ~1650 CE.
Elise Brown-Dussault, MSc student in Integrative Biology, Wilfrid Laurier University, studies caribou lichen transplantation to accelerate winter-habitat regeneration in boreal burns, on the lands of Ka’a’gee Tu, Deh Gah Got’ie First Nations, and Tłı̨chǫ nation in the Northwest Territories.
2022 — Simin Rahmani & Matt Ruggirello (PhD) · Sam Ebright (MSc)
Simin Rahmani, PhD student in fire ecology at Western Sydney University, researches drought and fire integration and their effect on tree mortality and recruitment. Matt Ruggirello studies post-fire tree regeneration dynamics in Ushuaia, Argentina, through the National University of La Plata. Sam Ebright, MSc Forestry at Northern Arizona University and former Flagstaff Hotshot, explores spatiotemporal relationships of fire and forest cover change in Vietnam.
2020–2021 — Sherwood, Novak, Armstrong, Scott
2021: Emma Sherwood (MSc, McMaster) maps peat vulnerability to smouldering in Northern Ontario with remote sensing and machine learning; Joseph Novak (PhD, UC Santa Cruz) studies molecular fire proxies in Lake Baikal sediments. 2020: Mary Armstrong (MSc, University of Florida) researches season-of-burn effects on Asteraceae and Poaceae reproduction; Robert Scott (PhD, University of Colorado Boulder) investigates how firefighter fatalities affect the construction of self among firefighters, comparing 30 years of Canadian and American incidents.
Next spring
Applications reopen in the spring
You must be an IAWF member to apply — student membership is $20 USD a year.