ISD congratulates Chris LaFleur, Doctorate of Engineering in Manufacturing Engineering alumna, on earning the 2018 Alumni Merit Award during Homecoming Week
Chris LaFleur returned home to Ann Arbor October 12 to receive the 2018 Alumni Merit Award, as part of Homecoming festivities on campus.
Home for LaFleur is the University of Michigan (U-M); Integrative Systems + Design, where she earned a Doctorate of Engineering in Manufacturing Engineering. And though she works thousands of miles from Ann Arbor, U-M is never far from her thoughts.
“My Michigan degree has had a profound impact on my career. U-M is well respected throughout the world. I wear my work ID on my Michigan Engineering lanyard every day,? added LaFleur. Chris enjoyed her return to campus and was in attendance for the football victory over Maryland. Go Blue!
LaFleur, who said she was inspired to become a scientist by her engineer father when she was a child, is a fire protection engineer and program lead for Hydrogen Safety, Codes, and Standards at Sandia National Laboratories, located in Albuquerque, NM. Her primary research involves evaluating fire risks for emerging energy automotive technologies, and her recent work focused on analyzing risks from traffic incidents involving hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in tunnels for several metropolitan areas on the East Coast. Her work also includes evaluating the impacts of hydrogen jet flames on steel and concrete structural material.
Prior to her work at Sandia, Chris worked at General Motors, where she managed corporate fire protection standards and was responsible for property insurance and enterprise risk management.
In 2017, LaFleur was recognized at the Clean Energy Education & Empowerment Women in Clean Energy Symposium in partnership with the MIT Energy Initiative and Stanford University?s Precourt Institute for Energy.
Previous to her U-M studies, LaFleur earned a B.S. in Geology and Mechanical Engineering from the University of Rochester, and a M.S. in Fire Protection Engineering from the University of Maryland.