The International FORUM of Fire Research Directors Annual Meeting 2024, hosted by the State Key Laboratory of Fire Science (SKLFS) of the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), was successfully held from October 29^th to 31^st in Hefei, Anhui Province. The hybrid meeting brought together directors and representatives from 16 renowned fire research institutions across 7 countries, including Tuula Hakkarainen, Principal Scientist of the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd., Finland; Birgitte Messerschmidt, Director of Research at the National Fire Protection Association, USA; Eric Guillaume, General Manager of the Efectis France, France; Steve Kerber, Executive Director of the Fire Safety Research Institute, part of UL Research Institutes, USA; David Sheppard, Senior Technical Advisor of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, USA; Anne Elise Steen-Hansen, Professor of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway; Matthew Hoehler, Chief of the Fire Research Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA; Marc L. Janssens, Engineer at the Fire Technology Department of Southwest Research Institute, USA; Ahmed Kashef, Director of the Fire Safety & Civil Engineering Infrastructure at National Research Council Canada, Canada; Amanda B. Dodd, Senior Manager of the Computational Sciences and Analysis Group at Sandia National Laboratories, USA; Haruki Nishi, Director of the Fire and Disaster Investigation Division at National Research Institute of Fire and Disaster, Japan; Sergey Dorofeev, Research Area Director at FM Global, USA; Franco Tamanini, Senior Research Fellow at FM Global, USA; Tomohiro Naruse, Director of the Department of Fire Engineering at Building Research Institute, Japan; Valérie Gourvès, Managing Director of the Scientific and Technical Centre for Building, France; Bo Song, Head of the Tianjin Fire Research Institute (TFRI) of Ministry of Emergency Management, China; and Naian Liu, Director of the SKLFS, China.

At the opening ceremony, Prof. Yao Fu, Vice President of USTC, delivered a welcome speech. Prof. Kun Qu, Director of the Office of International Cooperation at USTC, then presented a report on USTC's international cooperation and exchanges. Prof. Naian Liu presided over the whole conference. To exchange thoughts, members of the International FORUM of Fire Research Directors gave presentations, including the liaison reports given by Naian Liu as Chairman of the International Association for Fire Safety Science (IAFSS), Luck Bisby as Editor-in-Chief of Fire Safety Journal, and Eric Guillaume as Chairman of the Standardization Committee ISO TC92. In addition, a members-only session was held, where FORUM members formulated development strategies for international fire safety research and reached multiple agreements on future collaborations. During the annual meeting, two workshops were also arranged: New Energy Fires Workshop, and Large-Scale Wildland Fires Workshop. At the workshop on new energy fires, thematic reports covering such topics as lithium-ion battery fire, PV fire, and hydrogen safety were presented by Prof. Qingsong Wang from USTC, Dr. Sergey Dorofeev from the FM Global, Dr. Shaoyu Zhang from the TFRI, Dr. Eric Guillaume from the Efectis France, Prof. Huahua Xiao from USTC, and Prof. Yu Wang from USTC. At the workshop on large-scale wildland fires, thematic reports on topics such as extreme fire behaviors, wildfire re-ignitions, fire whirls, and satellite remote sensing of fires were delivered by Prof. Naian Liu from USTC, Dr. Xinyan Huang from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Prof. Kuibin Zhou from the Nanjing Tech University, Dr. Jiuling Yang from the Sichuan Normal University, Prof. Jiao Lei from USTC, and Dr. Yuyun Fu from USTC. Through these workshops, international participants, domestic scholars, and students carried out extensive and in-depth discussions on trending research topics. On October 31^st, the annual meeting concluded with visits to the SKLFS and National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (NSRL). The successful hosting of this year’s annual meeting facilitated the exchange of the latest achievements in fire research, thus fostering high-level international collaboration in fire safety science.