John R. Hall, Jr., Ph.D., assistant vice president for fire analysis and research at the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) in Quincy, Mass., has been given the 2004 Wayne P. Ellis Award. Hall has been recognized through the award for "his many years of dedicated and meritorious service to the cause of voluntary standardization, particularly with respect to standards for fire safety engineering and fire test response characteristics, and for terminology related to fire."

Hall lives in Norwood, Mass.

An ASTM International member since 1987, Hall serves on ASTM Committee E05 on Fire Standards and many of its subcommittees as well as E06 on Performance of Buildings. Outside ASTM International, Hall has been past president of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (InFORMS), where he is a fellow, and he is a member of the Society for Risk Analysis.

Hall has been with NFPA since 1984; he has previous experience from research analyst positions at the National Bureau of Standards Fire Research Laboratory, U.S. Fire Administration in the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Urban Institute, and the Resource Management Corp.

For most of his career, Hall has used statistics and structured decision-making models to support greater safety, primarily from fire, and more effective and efficient public services, mainly in fire and emergency departments. He has also focused on fire risk assessment and the use of assessment techniques in performance-based codes, standards, and design methods.

Hall graduated from Brown University with a B.A. in mathematics and earned his Ph.D. in operations research from the University of Pennsylvania.

Release #7080