Pacific Southwest Research Station

Education

PhD, Agricultural and Environmental Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley,1986
BS, Wood Science and Technology, University of California, Berkeley, 1979
Forestry, Australian National University, 1973-1977

Research Interests/Duties

As the Acting Director of the Pacific Southwest Research Station (PSW), Dr. Tran leads the efforts of approximately 50 agency scientists working in California, Hawaii and the U.S.-affiliated Pacific Islands. He came to PSW from the Northern Research Station where he serves as an Assistant Station Director. Prior to this, Dr. Tran was an Assistant Station Director for Research at PSW. He has done research on the use of forest and agricultural biomass for the production of ethanol as an alternate fuel. At the Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, WI, he did research on ignition and flame spread in structure fires. His ignition work is a fundamental component for modeling ignition in an urban wildland interface fire hazard assessment model. Between 1992 and 2004, Hao held several science administrator assignments in the Washington Office where he was a program manager and budget coordinator for the Forest Products program in the Forest Products and Harvesting Research and the Staff Assistant to the Deputy Chief for Research and Development.