Mitchell Kirby, Class of 2026
Mitchell Kirby comes from a family of firefighters. Now, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and a master’s in mechanical engineering from USC Viterbi, you might assume that he’s chosen a different vocation. But that depends on how you define firefighting.
Since joining the Sonny Astani Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering and the Department of Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering, Kirby has gained a reputation as a serial entrepreneur, launching initiatives from new student organizations, to ambitious event programming, to competition-winning startups. His next business venture, Ember Corps, is a drone-based wildfire response system designed to buy time before the fire trucks and helicopters arrive.
It’s an idea characterized by an engineer’s common sense: if you can use drones to fight wars, you can use them to fight fires. “The goal is to slow the advancement of the wildfire from the onset,” Kirby explained, “Remotely controlled by human operators, the aerial units are specifically positioned to target hard-to-reach areas. When a caller reports a fire to 911, the nearest fire station is alerted and the drones are launched – each unit delivers approximately 50-100-pound loads of fire retardant, which can make a significant impact in the early stages of a fire.”
Ember Corps is currently at the prototyping stage, and Kirby plans to continue developing the business after graduating as he embarks on a master’s in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. So, while Ember Corps might be launched at Harvard, it has its roots at USC – and, further back, to Kirby’s upbringing in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he grew up listening to stories of firefighting from his grandfathers, cousins and uncles.
Learning from the 2025 LA wildfires
Kirby’s ventures are rooted in infrastructure resilience. In 2025, he and a team selected as finalists for the 2025 Innovate LA x Das Family Competition developed Fire Warden, distinct from Ember Corps. Along with Snegha Sugandarraj (Construction Management), Reeth Kawad (Mechanical Engineering), Santie McKenzie (Computational Neuroscience), Michella Casaretto (Business Administration and Economics), and Zach Lustbader (Business Administrat
Mitchell Kirby and the Fire Warden team, with CEE alumnus Santanu Das
ion), Kirby helped design a novel solution for wildfire protection: an easily installed kit that transforms backyard pools into a water source for firefighting.
The training program for the Innovate LA competition kicks off in the fall semester and continues through to the spring, when selected teams compete for $20,000 in seed funding by pitching their business concepts to a panel of judges. Concepts are designed to tackle specific urban challenges facing Los Angeles, and Kirby’s team came together with the shared mission of developing a new strategy for defending homes against wildfires.
“We went to the Pacific Palisades after the fires to see what we could learn from the site,” said Kirby. “Nearly 7000 buildings were destroyed in that area. The emotional impact of seeing those wrecked homes was stronger than I had expected. We could feel the emptiness; the people who left, the homes that were leveled and the lives that were displaced.”
As the team walked through neighborhoods of ruins, they noticed a recurring phenomenon. Buildings had burned, but the swimming pools remained. The surface of the water was covered in ash and debris – but still, there was a ready resource for firefighting.
Kirby and his team continued to return to the impacted areas, speaking with fire departments and residents about how homes were defended during the wildfires. As they assessed competing needs, identified constraints and designed the mechanics and digital interface for the product, their initial observation evolved into a compelling pitch: a data-driven platform that turns backyard pools into wildfire defense systems, with a data-sharing option to assist emergency planning and fire response efforts across regions.
“This isn’t just about protecting individual properties,” Kirby explained. “We’re building a decentralized, citizen-powered, safety net. Our goal is to give homeowners agency, while simultaneously reducing pressure on first responders and even reducing insurance costs. In the context of the climate crisis, we need to redefine what it means to be prepared.”
A track record of success
The Das Family Competition judges agreed. FireWarden went on to win the competition and Kirby joined his teammates in receiving the outsized $20,000 check. As it happens, he’d been here before. The previous year, he had been part of the team that developed FungiFix, the winner of the 2024 Innovate LA x Das Family Competition. FungiFix has since been incorporated and is now providing its “mycoremediation” solution to clean contaminated sites – including land impacted by wildfires. Mushrooms are used to break down pollutants in soil, and the remaining biomass is transformed into functional biofiller for low-carbon construction materials.
Kirby ultimately chose to move on to new ventures, but FungiFix is still part of his entrepreneurial DNA. This year, he led the 2026 Innovate LA x Das Family Competition and startup incubator. Now, upon graduating, he’s an advisor on the board for Innovate LA and he’s launched multiple initiatives throughout his time at USC. To name just a few – he founded the USC Association of Energy Engineers (AEE), which has grown to approximately 100 members and includes three design teams, all of which have reached national competition finals. He also created the Sustainable Futures Panel Series, bringing engineers, founders and policymakers into conversation. Next, as president of both USC’s AEE & USC’s American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) chapter, he has worked to introduce a further emphasis on entrepreneurship in the CEE Department. Most recently he spearheaded The Games Week at USC: Building LA28, along with fellow environmental and mechanical engineering student Alex Bartolomei, who is also his collaborator in building Ember Corps.
The infrastructure of resilience
“Each one of these initiatives comes back to the question of resilience,” said Kirby. “Whether that’s convening experts to discuss how Los Angeles can prepare for the Olympic and Paralympic Games, or thinking about how we can advance the circular economy, or developing an actionable solution to help fight and contain major wildfires.”
At Harvard, Kirby plans to study infrastructure, energy systems and policy while continuing to build Ember Corps. He’s prepared for the idea to adapt as he continues to learn and seek out new perspectives and emerging technologies. His time at USC has been a continual process of evolving ideas, each one related to another like a mycorrhizal network.
“Ultimately, my goal in each case has been to build something that has a tangible impact on the infrastructure of resilience,” said Kirby. “In the context of civil and environmental engineering, there’s no space for startups that don’t relate to a true human need or help sustain our environment. Coming up with a smart idea doesn’t take much effort – but being able to turn an idea into a workable, impactful and beneficial product or solution? That’s a learning process, one that I’ve been able to pursue here at USC.”
Published on May 7th, 2026
Last updated on May 7th, 2026