Ulf Wickström is a professor at the Luleå University of Technology, Luleå, Sweden. He was the director of the fire research laboratory of SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden between 1986 and 2010. Professor Wickström has a PhD in fire technology from the Lund University of Technology and a master of science from the University of California, Berkeley, USA. He has for several years been active in international fire safety standardization where he has introduced many concepts based on his research such as the plate thermometer for measuring temperature and radiation, parametric fire curves of compartment fires, and shadow effects for calculating steel temperatures. He is also the originator of the notation adiabatic surface temperature which is now being used increasingly by modellers to express fire exposure. He developed the well-known computer code TASEF for calculating temperature in fire exposed materials, composites and structures.