Professor Baljinder Kandola

Baljinder Kandola is a Professor of Materials Fire Science with a PhD degree in Physical Chemistry. Baljinder started working in the ‘Fire Materials’ area in 1982 with her PhD project, ‘Studies on the Flame-Proofing of Cellulosics’. She joined the University of Bolton in 1992 as a Research Fellow and since 2005 is working as Professor of Materials Fire Science. Her particular expertise is in developing high performance materials, flammability and fire retardancy of textiles and structural/semi-structural composites, fire gas analysis, fire retardant mechanisms and associated modelling.

Her research work involves incorporation of reactive components or additives including nano and micro fillers, into polymers by melt blending, in-situ polymerisation or as surface treatments and the study of the combustion behaviour of modified polymers. Her other interest is to study the effects of different treatments on residual mechanical properties of heat/fire exposed composites. This also includes the development of a predictive mathematical model to establish a relationship between the amount of additives, fire performance of the composite and its mechanical properties before and after fire/heat exposure.


She teaches modules on technical textiles, composites, advanced materials, nanomaterials for environment, geotextiles and research methods. Other responsibilities include supervision and training of PhD, MSc and BSc project students in the Fire Materials Group. To date, she has published over 130 papers in refereed journals, 65 conference proceedings and co-authored and written chapters in a number of books on ‘Fire Retardancy of Materials’. She has so far successfully supervised 18 PhDs. She has an established track record of attracting funding for collaborative and multidisciplinary research from EPSRC, Innovate UK, EU and industrial sources, having secured research funding of £3.1M since 2001.