The FIRE Translational Lab is being established within as a new interdisciplinary research lab focused on firefighter health, wellness, readiness, and translational health innovation.

The lab is being created to address a critical gap: firefighter health risks are often studied, treated, and managed in disconnected ways. Occupational exposure, cancer risk, cardiovascular health, behavioral health, sleep, injury, family stress, and preventive care are frequently separated across different systems. Firefighters, however, experience these risks together.

​The FIRE Lab provides a focused structure for building the research agenda, faculty collaborations, fire service partnerships, pilot studies, student training opportunities, external grant submissions, and translational products that will eventually support formal center designation.

A Lab With a Center Vision

The FIRE Lab is the first stage in a larger vision: establishing the future FIRE Center as a national academic home for firefighter health science.

​The lab’s role is to build the evidence, partnerships, infrastructure, and funding portfolio needed to become a true research center. Over time, the FIRE Lab will be positioned for formal consideration as a Purdue University research center.

Mission, Vision & Goals

Mission

The mission of the FIRE Lab is to advance firefighter health, safety, readiness, and quality of life through interdisciplinary research, evidence-based education, innovation, and translational health partnerships.

Vision
The vision of the FIRE Lab is to build the foundation for a nationally recognized FIRE Center that will translate firefighter health research into tools that fire departments, clinicians, families, and communities can use.

Long-Term Goal
The long-term goal is to develop the FIRE Lab into a formal FIRE Center dedicated to firefighter health research, education, innovation, and translational practice.

Core Goals
The FIRE Lab has several defined goals:
    1. To develop an interdisciplinary firefighter health research agenda.
    2. To build partnerships with fire departments, firefighters, clinicians, students, and community organizations.
    3. To generate pilot data that will support external grant submissions.
    4. To create firefighter-facing, clinician-facing, department-facing, and family-facing tools.
    5. To mentor students and trainees in firefighter health science.
    6. To develop evidence-based education for clinicians and the fire service.
    7. To position Purdue as a national leader in firefighter health research.

Core Lab Leadership & Faculty Collaborators

Building an Interdisciplinary Firefighter Health Research Network

The FIRE Lab is being established as an interdisciplinary firefighter health research lab with a defined mission, vision, and long-term goal of becoming a future formal Purdue University FIRE Center. The lab’s leadership and collaborator model is intentionally designed to bring together faculty expertise from across Purdue University’s College of Health and Human Sciences and related academic units.

Firefighter health is not limited to one discipline. It includes occupational exposure, cancer risk, cardiovascular health, behavioral health, sleep, nutrition, injury prevention, family systems, rural health, communication safety, human performance, clinical care, and translational health innovation. For that reason, the FIRE Lab will be built through cross-departmental collaboration, shared pilot projects, student engagement, and external grant development.

​The FIRE Lab’s faculty collaborator model reflects the interdisciplinary structure described in the FIRE Center proposal, which identifies Nursing, Health & Kinesiology, Health Sciences, Public Health, Psychological Sciences, Nutrition Science, Human Development and Family Science, Hospitality and Tourism Management, and Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences as natural contributors to firefighter health science.​

Lab Lead

Julian L. Gallegos, PhD, MBA, FNP-BC, NREMT, FAUNA, FADLN, FAAMN
Founder and Lead, Purdue HHS FIRE Lab
Assistant Professor
​Purdue University School of Nursing

Dr. Julian L. Gallegos is the founder and lead of the FIRE Lab. He brings a unique combination of experience as a nurse practitioner, firefighter/EMT, Air Force veteran, men’s health scholar, theorist, educator, and Purdue faculty member. His work focuses on firefighter health, men’s health, occupational health translation, behavioral health, stigma, preventive care engagement, and health promotion for high-risk male and first responder populations. Dr. Gallegos is also a National Fallen Firefighters Foundation Advocate promoting firefighter health and safety to reduce preventable line-of-duty deaths and injuries by educating peers, policymakers, and the public on the organization's life safety initiatives

Dr. Gallegos developed the MANifest Health Theory, which will serve as an initial research launch framework for the FIRE Lab’s early work with male firefighters. This framework will help guide research on health behavior, masculinity norms, firehouse culture, stigma, help-seeking, preventive care, readiness, and self-care within the fire service.

​As lab lead, Dr. Gallegos will guide the development of the FIRE Lab’s research agenda, fire service partnerships, student engagement, pilot studies, translational products, and external funding strategy. His long-term goal is to build the lab into a nationally recognized Purdue University FIRE Center focused on firefighter health, wellness, readiness, and translational health innovation.

Faculty Collaborators by College Unit

​Nursing
Nursing will provide leadership in nurse and nurse practitioner-led clinical translation, firefighter-specific primary care, occupational health screening, men’s health, behavioral health integration, preventive care, care navigation, and implementation science. 

Susan Kersey, DNP, PMHNP-BC
Clinical Associate Professor
Director Psych Mental Health NP Program

Abidemi Ajuwon, DNP, CNS, PMHNP-BC
Clinical Assistant Professor
​
Dr. Ajuwon is a Clinical Assistant Professor and Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner dedicated to advancing mental health care through clinical practice, education, and mentorship. She is passionate about caring for individuals experiencing mental health challenges and is committed to providing compassionate, evidence-based, and patient-centered care. As a professor, she enjoys teaching, mentoring, and collaborating with students to support their academic and professional growth. Through her work, Dr. Ajuwon strives to promote mental wellness, reduce stigma, and empower patients to achieve their highest level of health and well-being.

Health and Kinesiology
Health and Kinesiology would contribute expertise in human performance, tactical athlete readiness, cardiovascular fitness, injury prevention, rehabilitation, fatigue, movement quality, and return-to-duty.

Timothy Gavin, PhD
Professor
​
Tim’s laboratory team investigates the communication between skeletal muscle and the vasculature with a focus on the benefits of exercise and detrimental influences of chronic conditions (advanced age, obesity, and diabetes). In addition, he has worked with rural communities in Indiana to lower the rate of obesity through greater access to physical activity and healthy nutrition. His work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and the American Heart Association (AHA) . He is an Active Fellow of the National Academy of Kinesiology (NAK) and a Fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM). Tim serves as a mentor in the Purdue University Horizon Program, the Purdue University Insights Program, the ACSM Leadership and Diversity Training Program (LDTP), the ACSM Women to Fellowship Program, and the American Kinesiology Association (AKA) Leadership Institute.

Cassandra Ledman, MS, ACSM RCEP,Wellcoaches CHWC, ACSM EIM III, NASM CES
Clinical Associate Professor

Cassandra Ledman is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Health and Kinesiology at Purdue University and a Clinical Exercise Physiologist and National Board-Certified Health and Wellness Coach. Her expertise spans clinical exercise physiology, health screening, fitness assessment, exercise testing and prescription, lifestyle medicine, and health behavior change coaching. She teaches undergraduate and graduate students in clinical exercise physiology and health and wellness coaching, preparing future healthcare and fitness professionals through competency-based experiential education.

Her scholarship focuses on experiential education, coaching science, and health professions education, with a particular emphasis on evaluating community-based experiential learning models that result in both student professional and personal development while improving health and wellness outcomes among community participants.

Within the FIRE Lab, Cassandra contributes expertise in clinical exercise physiology, health behavior change, and lifestyle medicine. Her clinical background includes working with individuals with cardiovascular, pulmonary, metabolic, and oncology-related conditions. She is interested in translating evidence-based exercise and behavior change strategies into programs that promote firefighter health, readiness, and long-term wellbeing while preparing future health professionals to deliver preventive, patient-centered care.​

Adam Heavrin, MS
Lecturer

​Adam Heavrin brings critical expertise in exercise performance, strength and conditioning, tactical athlete performance, wearable technology, and health data translation to the Purdue University FIRE Lab. As faculty in Purdue’s Department of Health and Kinesiology, he teaches within the Graduate Program in Clinical Exercise Physiology and leads coursework in Tactical Athlete Performance, examining the unique physical and occupational demands placed on firefighters, law enforcement, EMS, and military personnel. His emerging scholarship on wearable technology, artificial intelligence, and health feedback systems aligns directly with the FIRE Lab’s mission to advance firefighter readiness, recovery, and real-time health monitoring. Within the lab, Adam will help develop practical systems that integrate wearable data, field-based assessments, and gold-standard laboratory testing so firefighters can better understand and act on meaningful health information while ensuring AI-generated feedback supports, but never replaces, expert human guidance. Grounded in both professional expertise and personal connections to veterans, police officers, and firefighters, Adam brings a strong commitment to improving the health, readiness, and well-being of those who serve and protect their communities.

Health Sciences
​Health Sciences will contribute expertise in occupational exposure, environmental health, toxicology, industrial hygiene, cancer risk, biomonitoring, respiratory health, contamination pathways, and PPE-related exposure.

Sa Liu, PhD, MPH, CIH
Associate Professor

​Dr. Liu is an exposure scientist and certified industrial hygienist (CIH) specializing in human exposure assessment. Dr. Liu's research focuses on the development and the implementation of comprehensive field assessment methods to understand human exposures to chemical contaminants and their associations with adverse health effects in worker and community populations.

Public Health
Public Health will contribute expertise in epidemiology, prevention science, occupational health surveillance, rural health, community engagement, program evaluation, health equity, and policy translation.

Carlos Mahaffey, PharmD, MPH
Assistant Professor

Dr. Carlos Mahaffey is an assistant professor of Public Health at Purdue University. His research and professional interests include the development and implementation of research programs that examine men’s sexual health, healthcare utilization and experience, HIV risk and prevention, and the social determinants of health among historically-marginalized populations (i.e., justice-involved persons and Black men who have sex with men [BMSM]). He has been engaged in this work for over 15 years.

Stewart Alexander, PHD
​Associate Professor 

Psychological Sciences
Psychological Sciences will contribute expertise in trauma exposure, PTSD, depression, anxiety, suicide prevention, stigma, resilience, help-seeking, peer support, measurement science, readiness assessment, training, skill decay prevention and intervention testing.

Brooke Macnamara, PhD
​Associate Professor

​Dr. Macnamara investigates predictors of skilled performance variance. This includes examinations of change in performance—skill acquisition, skill decay, and learning transfer and differences in performance across people—expertise and achievement. Dr. Macnamara studies multiple types of predictors, including experiential factors (e.g., training, practice), environmental factors at multiple levels (e.g., task characteristics, pressure situations, societal structures), cognitive factors (e.g., working memory capacity, shifts in strategies), and non-cognitive factors (e.g., affective traits, stress responses, motivation), as well as their interactions. 

Nutrition Science
Nutrition Science will contribute expertise in cardiometabolic health, obesity prevention, hydration, inflammation, shift-work nutrition, recovery nutrition, and station-based food culture.

Adam Huffield, EdD
​Clinical Assistant Professor

Human Development and Family Science
​Human Development and Family Science will contribute expertise in family systems, couple and partner relationships, parenting, occupational stress spillover, resilience, secondary trauma, and household-level support.

Cezanne Elias, PhD, LMFT
​Clinical Associate Professor

​Dr. Cezanne Elias is a Clinical Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Science at Purdue University whose work focuses on strengthening family resilience and advancing community‑engaged programming. As a family scholar‑practitioner, she co‑develops and evaluates evidence‑informed initiatives to reduce stress and increase family connectedness. As a licensed marriage and family therapist, she integrates clinical expertise into teaching, mentoring, and community partnerships to strengthen well‑being across families and communities

Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences
Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences will contribute expertise in hearing conservation, auditory health, communication in high-noise environments, voice strain, balance, vestibular function, and communication safety.

TBD

Hospitality and Tourism Management
Hospitality and Tourism Management will contribute expertise in shared living environments, service climate, firehouse culture, morale, belonging, onboarding, retention, and team cohesion.

Susan Gordon,  PhD,  MBA
Associate Professor
​
Dr. Susan Gordon is an Associate Professor in the White Lodging-J.W. Marriott, Jr. School of Hospitality & Tourism Management at Purdue University. Her research focuses on employee well-being in the hospitality industry, which is known for stressful working conditions including long hours, unstable schedules, physically demanding jobs, and emotional labor when serving guests. She is particularly interested in how organizations can improve employee well-being through increasing supervisor and organizational support. Prior to entering academia, Dr. Gordon worked for over ten years in the hospitality industry holding various management positions with Walt Disney World, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, and Marriott International. ​

Shawn Bucher, PhD, MBA, CEC (Certified Executive Chef) and CCE (Certified Culinary Educator)
Clinical Assistant Professor​ 

​Dr. Bucher's area of expertise is culinary arts, hospitality education, and workforce development. As a chef and educator, he is passionate about helping individuals improve their quality of life through practical, nutritious, and cost-effective food preparation. He see's himself contributing to this work by sharing evidence-based cooking strategies that help firefighters prepare healthy meals efficiently, helping them maximize food budgets, and build sustainable eating habits that support physical performance, recovery, and long-term health.