Published: 21.07.25
PhD student Leo Willem Menzemer has been awarded The Dr. Guylène Proulx, OC Scholarship for his research on how long people are able to remember a specific evacuation route in a building. The scholarship includes $5,000 and an invitation to present his findings at a conference in Canada.
“This is definitely the highlight of my summer. It’s not a Nobel Prize, but it feels like a major recognition – both for me and for the work we’ve done at DBI, the Danish Institute of Fire and Security Technology,” says Leo Willem Menzemer, who holds a master’s degree in Fire Safety Engineering and is currently completing his PhD thesis.
The scholarship is awarded by the SFPE Foundation (Society of Fire Protection Engineers) and named after Dr. Guylène Proulx, one of the pioneers in researching human behavior in emergencies. She was among the first to document and analyze how people actually react during evacuations, and her work has had significant influence on modern fire safety regulations. The prize is awarded to students who continue her legacy and contribute new knowledge that can be applied in practice.
“Unfortunately, I never had the chance to meet Dr. Proulx, as she passed away prematurely. But it is very meaningful to receive a prize in her name that acknowledges the importance of human factors in fire safety, says Leo Menzemer.
Leo Menzemer’s research tackles an often overlooked but crucial question: If you learn the location of an emergency exit during a drill, will you still remember it when it really matters? The project explores how spatial information – such as the layout of escape routes – is stored in memory and how that memory degrades over time.
In a series of experiments, Leo Menzemer used virtual reality to guide test subjects through an evacuation route in a building. Afterwards, participants were tested on how well they could recall the information after one day, one week, and several months.
“We’re trying to understand what happens to our memory when we’re not reminded of evacuation routes for a long period. Can we predict how fast we forget? And what does that mean for how often we should train evacuation procedures, for instance in the workplace?”, says Leo Menzemer
The final results of the study are not yet available, partly because Leo Menzemer also wants to test how well participants remember the route after a full year. However, preliminary data suggest that individuals who were already familiar with the building tend to remember the route better and for longer. This opens up new considerations for how fire drills should be designed for different building types and user groups.
Leo Menzemer hopes to use his results to model so-called memory curves, which show how and when memory declines.
In addition to the recognition and financial support, Leo Menzemer now has the opportunity to share his research with an international audience. In October, he will travel to Vancouver to present his preliminary results during a poster session at SFPE’s Annual Conference and formally receive the award on stage.
He is also in dialogue with the SFPE Foundation about potential future activities – such as webinars or presentations at European SFPE conferences – to help disseminate his findings and contribute to the development of evidence-based practice in the field.
“I hope my work can help make fire drills and training requirements more targeted and effective. In the end, it’s about ensuring that people are actually able to find their way out in time if an emergency occurs,” says Leo Menzemer.
Read also the article Timber construction feels more fire-prone than concrete, brick, and steel buildings, which describes another part of Leo Menzemer's PhD dissertation.
