President, Badri Ghimire
Training and Education Officer, Leo Janczak
Vice President, Angie Liotta
Secretary/Treasurer, Mayowa George
We are happy to welcome badri, angie, leo, and mayowa into national SAFE leadership positions!
National SAFE officers provide overall leadership to student members and local chapters and are elected by SAFE members annually. Among other responsibilities, the officers provide a student voice on the AFE Board of Directors, coordinate the annual grants to chapters, and plan student events at conferences. Thanks to Badri, Angie, Leo, and Mayowa for serving in 2025, and thank you to our outgoing officers: Andrew Johnson, Bushra Sanira Asif, Arielle Bennett, and Matt Behrens.
Thank you to those who voted in this election for your participation!
2025 SAFE PRESIDENT
Badri Ghimire is a Ph.D. student in the Landscape Ecology and Fire (LEAF) Lab at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, specializing in fire ecology. His research integrates remote sensing and quantitative wood anatomy to investigate effects of fire severities and intensities in lodgepole pine trees, as well as the effects of fire intensity on seed viability in Arizona cypress. He collaborated with farmers and ranchers to implement fuels reduction through prescribed fires in California and Texas. He has a lifelong passion for working with fire and enjoys sharing knowledge with students, community members, and land managers.
2025 SAFE VICE PRESIDENT
Angie is a third year PhD student at the University of Washington in Brian Harvey’s lab, where she researches how climate–wildfire interactions shape forest recovery across environmental gradients in the interior Pacific Northwest. Broadly, she is interested in how climate and disturbance interactions influence forest resilience and plant functions. Prior to her PhD, she completed my MS at Colorado State University, where she examined how drought exposure drives trade-offs among these functions in ponderosa pine. She earned her B.A. in Geography at the University of Colorado – Boulder. During her time at CU Boulder, her research focused on tree mortality in the subalpine and post-fire regeneration in the lower montane.
2025 SAFE education and training officer
Leo Janczak is a third-year undergraduate student at the University of Montana, where he is pursuing a degree in Forestry with a minor in Fire Science and Geographic Information Systems. In addition to his academic work, Leo is a Fire and Fuels Technician at the University of Montana FireCenter during the school year and a Hand Crew Module Member with the U.S. Forest Service during the summer. He is also currently involved in a research project focusing on the development of canopy gap structures following prescribed fires in long-term study areas.
2025 SAFE secretary/treasurer
Mayowa George is a PhD student at Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas, where his work focuses on wildfire prevention, fire danger assessment, fire advocacy, and prescribed burning management. His research aims to improve fire danger indices by integrating key environmental variables such as fuel moisture, vegetation condition, temperature, and long-term drought indicators. By developing models to assess fire risk, he aims to enhance prescribed burning strategies and support proactive wildfire management.
