Patrick Durham

Battery Fire Safety Expert: Patrick Durham is a mechanical engineer and Captain at a suburban Fire Department in Michigan, with just over 20 years experience in each field. His engineering career centered on R&D in the automotive industry, focused on EV battery structures, safety specifications, failure analysis, and risk mitigation. He holds multiple patents related to EV battery structure design. That background, paired with hands-on fire service experience, gives Patrick a rare dual perspective on lithium-ion battery emergencies: he understands how these batteries fail at the design level, has responded to real-world incidents in the field, and has worked to engineer systems that prevent and contain those failures. He serves on the UL Fire Safety Research Institute's Batteries and EV panel and the IAFC Lithium-Ion Battery Committee, and is the founder of StacheD Training.