VTTI - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Group Leader
- Leader of the Human Factors
Andrew Krum is the Leader of the Human Factors and Advanced Systems Testing Group within the Division of Freight, Transit & Heavy Vehicle Safety. Mr. Krum has served as a researcher and development engineer in the field of human factors and ergonomics in ground transportation for 18 years. In his past work as a Senior Technical Specialist in the Ergonomics and Driver Accommodation Group at Navistar Inc., Mr. Krum provided guidance to the engineering community on the needs of the drivers and crew on projects spanning heavy through light commercial and military vehicle development and testing. He currently manages projects that focus on commercial truck and bus advanced safety technologies with research sponsored by FMCSA, FTA, NHTSA, NAS and NIOSH over the last 8 years. These projects are investigating advancements in the testing protocols, design guidelines, and maintenance requirements for advanced driver-assistance systems and automated driving system technologies. Recently, Mr. Krum served with NIOSH through an Intergovernmental Personnel Agreement to help develop new information and scientific knowledge pertaining to COVID-19 engineering controls for heavy and commercial vehicles under the Occupational Safety and Health Technical Assistance to Re-open Industries Safely Program. Also related to COVID-19, he led research for the Federal Transit Administration and the Center for Urban Transportation Research into engineering ventilation controls for transit buses.
Job Titles:
- Group Leader
- Senior Research Associate and Leader of the Fleet Focus & Industry Applications
Andrew Miller is a Senior Research Associate and leader of the Fleet Focus & Industry Applications group in the Division of Freight, Transit, & Heavy Vehicle Safety at VTTI. He is currently the Principal Investigator or Project Manager for multiple studies totaling over $2 million. With a background in methodology and statistics, Andrew's research and outreach efforts have led to enhanced safety for occupational drivers through the identification of unsafe driving behaviors and human factors testing. Andrew focuses heavily on organizational systems, individual differences among people, connected and automated vehicles, data analytics, and driver behaviors. Andrew's research conducted for multiple federal agencies and industry partners has involved the investigation of various technologies, classification of safe and unsafe driver behaviors and characteristics, and naturalistic data collection and reduction.
Andy Petersen is chief engineer at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI).
He has extensive experience working with real-time data acquisition hardware, DSPs, FPGAs, software, firmware, machine vision programming, algorithmic programming, control, robotics, and automation, and has been involved in a wide variety of human factors studies at VTTI.
He is an expert at covert installation of video surveillance, data collection hardware, and in-vehicle displays.
Christine Absher is the chief finance officer of VTTI and the treasurer for VTT, LLC (GCAPS). She has been with VTTI for over 5 years and brings more than 23 years of experience in higher education at Virginia Tech. She leads institute research administration, including pre/post-award, contracts, and inventory control, in addition to directing budget development and oversight and compliance and fiscal operations. Christine oversees a collaborative, service-oriented team that balances compliance and facilitates solutions to complex financial needs. She prioritizes building and operating robust support systems and developing policies and guidelines to ease staff and faculty administrative burdens. In 2003, Christine was part of the team that structured the monthly automation of Virginia Tech's Return Overhead allocation, and in 2019, she made key contributions as a member of the Virginia Tech Curriculum Team that developed the Virginia Tech Fiscal Management Certification Program.
Job Titles:
- Chief Software Architect
- Senior Research Associate
Dean Iverson is a chief software architect at VTTI where he designs and develops software in support of various transportation research projects. His areas of responsibility include large-scale distributed system architecture, data visualization, and the design and development of desktop, web, and mobile user interfaces.
Dean has more than 25 years of experience in software development. In addition to speaking at development conferences, he has co-authored two books on topics relating to desktop, web, and mobile software development. His research interests include robotics, machine learning, and large-scale distributed system design.
Job Titles:
- Senior Research Associate
- Team Leader
Dr. Abhijit Sarkar is a Senior Research Associate in the Division of Data & Analytics at VTTI. He received his doctoral degree from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech in 2017. His doctoral research focused on the remote measurement of cardiac signals and their application in biometric and cognitive behavior monitoring. His research has also focused on computer vision for object detection and the extraction of vital signals from video data. Dr. Sarkar has contributed to several projects related to driver distraction and attention monitoring, vehicle-to-vehicle connectivity, data watermarking, and heavy vehicles. In general, his expertise includes statistical data analysis, statistical modeling, computer vision, machine learning, deep learning, signal processing, and affective computing. Dr. Sarkar has over 10 years of software development experience in both academia and industry.
Job Titles:
- Group Leader
- Research Scientist With the Division of Data & Analytics
Dr. Gibran Ali is a research scientist with the Division of Data & Analytics and leads the Applied Analytics Group. His areas of research focus are characterizing driving behavior, scenario extraction from real world data, test case development, and operational design domain (ODD) based evaluation of localities. At VTTI he has developed complex data mining algorithms that sift through large datasets to extract various driving scenarios. Dr. Ali has also created numerous interactive analytics tools to help users quickly extract deeper insights from data. He also has significant experience in drivetrain simulation, performance evaluation, energy harvesting, and mechatronics. Dr. Ali has taught undergraduate courses in mechatronics, control systems, and mechanical vibrations. Prior to working at Virginia Tech, he worked as an R&D engineer at the vehicle performance and simulation center of Mahindra Automobiles. Dr. Ali's educational background includes a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Virginia Tech, an M.S. in mechanical engineering from Clemson University, and a B.Tech. in the same field from National Institute of Technology Srinagar.
Job Titles:
- Education and Workforce Development Coordinator
- Professor
Dr. Miguel Perez serves as the Education and Workforce Development Coordinator for Safe-D. In this role, he works with researchers to incorporate education and workforce development into all projects, incorporates the new materials into existing and new education and workforce development programs, and compiles learning materials from all projects.Within VTTI, Dr. Perez leads the Data Engineering Group within the Division of Data & Analytics. In that role, he supervises over 70 graduate and undergraduate students that support research efforts at VTTI and oversees improvement and dissemination efforts for the SHRP2 Naturalistic Driving Study data, which boasts over 200 active data use licenses. These efforts include presentations at numerous workshops, webinars, and seminars to improve awareness of the data and increase its use, particularly amongst college-level students.
Dr. Perez is also an affiliate professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering department at Virginia Tech with a focus on Human Factors. In that capacity, he has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in research design, human factors principles, and industrial ergonomics. He also mentors students in various academic departments and enjoys working with students throughout their academic experiences.
His research interests include data mining, driver distraction, human modeling, collision avoidance systems, infotainment systems, and driver performance in test track and naturalistic environments. Dr. Perez has authored more than 50 refereed scientific articles and technical reports and published dozens of naturalistic driving datasets in collaboration with external researchers.
Job Titles:
- Co - Technology Transfer Coordinator for Safe - D
- Technology Transfer Coordinator
Dr. Mike Mollenhauer serves as a Co-Technology Transfer Coordinator for Safe-D. As the T2 Coordinator, Dr. Mollenhauer provides a central resource for the development and execution of T2 plans, also a required component for every project. He shares responsibility with Mr. Neurauter for maximizing the dissemination of research findings directly to planners and developers of transformation technologies and supporting commercialization.
Dr. Mollenhauer has significant experience in the areas of IP management and utilization and is currently the Director of the Division of Technology Implementation at VTTI. In this role, he regularly interacts with both private industry and public transportation institutions to identify gaps between existing solutions and future connected and automated technology needs. Dr. Mollenhauer creates and executes technology deployment plans while combining creative problem solving and systems development experience to deliver functional solutions that apply the best of new and emerging technologies. His latest accomplishments include providing technical leadership for the development of the Virginia Connected Corridor by evaluating and implementing emerging technologies to support the Virginia Department of Transportation's evaluation of connected vehicle technologies in a real operational environment.
Through his leadership and participation in several technology startup companies, Dr. Mollenhauer has developed practical experience in all aspects of the T2 process, from considering IP in project planning and contracting; making timely and well-documented invention disclosures; working with university IP management offices and other stakeholders; formulating attractive licensing bundles; linking technical solutions to market opportunities; and securing resources and outlets for technologies by directly engaging both public and private entities likely to benefit from them.
Dr. Myra Blanco serves as the institute's Chief Growth Officer. In this role, she is tasked with cultivating opportunities for researchers and developing initiatives in an effort to help VTTI grow. She is an impact multiplier that will help the institute achieve sustained growth and continue to cultivate a positive trajectory. In addition, Blanco serves as a Senior Faculty Fellow within the Virginia Tech Office of Research and Innovation where she provides leadership for increasing diversity, inclusion, and empowerment for the university's faculty and staff.
Formally trained in human factors engineering, her areas of expertise extend beyond automated driving systems. Her experience includes evaluation of in-vehicle devices, distraction, driver behavior, training, work/rest cycles, fatigue, and active safety systems for light and heavy vehicles. She has directed research efforts in naturalistic, on-road, test track, and simulator test environments and she has authored and co-authored numerous publications on driver performance and safety. Dr. Blanco was the recipient of the 2013 SAE International J. Cordell Breed Award for Women Leaders and the 2017 NHTSA Award for Safety Engineering Excellence. She was also named SAE Contributor of the Year for 2021, the highest honor bestowed on a volunteer for their contributions to the society.
Job Titles:
- Associate Director
- Associate Director at San Diego State University
Dr. Sahar Machiani is the Safe-D Associate Director at San Diego State University (SDSU). She works alongside the Safe-D directors with a focus on the activities conducted at SDSU as well as collaboration between SDSU and VTTI/TTI. She facilitates access to Safe-D resources and supports the continued growth of research, education, and workforce development in the transportation program at SDSU.Dr. Machiani is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at SDSU with specialized expertise in Transportation Engineering. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from Iran University of Science and Technology (2005), a Master of Science in Transportation Engineering from Sharif University of Technology (2008), and a Doctor of Philosophy in Civil Engineering from Virginia Tech (2014). Her areas of research include traffic safety, driver behavior modeling, evacuation and large-scale network modeling, signal control and operation, and applications of connected vehicle technology. Before joining SDSU in 2015, she was a research associate at the Center for Infrastructure-based Safety Systems, Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI). During her Ph.D. studies, she conducted research at two transportation labs at Virginia Tech and concurrently worked at VTTI, allowing her to blend academic and professional experience. She is a faculty member of the Center for Human Dynamics in the Mobile Age (HDMA), and an adjunct faculty at the Computational Science Research Center (CSRC) at SDSU. She supports several Transportation Research Board Committees, and she is a member of the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) and WTS-Advancing Women in Transportation.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Division of Vehicle, Driver, & System Safety
- Research Scientist and Leader of the Applied Driver Assessment Performance & Training Group
Dr. Sheila "Charlie" Klauer is a research scientist and leader of the Applied Driver Assessment Performance & Training Group in the Division of Vehicle, Driver, & System Safety. In addition, she is an associate professor in the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department at Virginia Tech. Dr. Klauer has been working in transportation research since 1996; prior to joining VTTI in 1999, she worked at the Battelle Human Factors Research Center in Seattle, WA. At VTTI, she has served as the principal investigator (PI) for a series of naturalistic driving studies (NDS) including three teen NDSs and the Canada Naturalistic Driving Study. She currently serves as the PI of the Driver Adaptation of L2 Technologies study and for two additional NDSs that are focused on adolescents. The first of these is concerned with adolescents diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder and the second NDS is focused on adolescents diagnosed with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.
Dr. Klauer recently authored papers that have been published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of Pediatrics, and Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics. Her NEJM paper is still listed in the top 2% most read of all articles in the NEJM. Her primary research involves studying the effects of distraction and fatigue on driving, especially with regard to novice drivers.
Job Titles:
- Associate Director
- Associate Director at the Texas a & M Transportation Institute
Dr. Susan Chrysler is the Safe-D Associate Director at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) a part of the Texas A&M University System (TAMU). In her role as Safe-D Associate Director, Dr. Chrysler manages TAMU activities. She is responsible for internally coordinating research at TTI and facilitating access to Safe-D resources. Dr. Chrysler tracks budget and technical progress at TAMU and coordinates with the directors to ensure that all efforts are executed and reported in accordance with their associated plan. She implements K-12 STEM activities and the Safe-D summer undergraduate research internship program.Dr. Chrysler is a human factors psychologist and Senior Research Scientist in the Traffic Operations and Roadway Safety Division at TTI. She returned to TTI in 2014 after spending three years at the University of Iowa as the Director of Research at the National Advanced Driving Simulator. She also established the Safer-Sim University Transportation Center at the University of Iowa in 2013 and served as its first director. Dr. Chrysler's areas of technical expertise include human factors, driving simulation, driver behavior, visual attention, traffic operations, visibility, and photometry. She has served as Principal Investigator or task leader on over 40 projects across the full range of safety topics. Dr. Chrysler began her career with the 3M Company working in product development for traffic control devices. She has served as chair of the Transportation Research Board Committee on Vehicle User Characteristics and is an active member on several other safety and human factors committees.
The Safe-D consortium was assembled by the Director, Dr. Zachary Doerzaph, with the expressed intent to make significant progress toward a nation with systemically safe travel through research, education and workforce development, and technology transfer efforts. While this vision is ambitious, Dr. Doerzaph has dedicated his faculty career to advanced transportation systems in accordance with his genuine belief that technology represents the future of our transportation system. Yet, his experience has also made him keenly aware that if not thoughtfully deployed, such technologies can exacerbate safety deficiencies and undermine progress toward that vision.
Dr. Zeb Bowden oversees the Division of Technology Development and Deployment, which is comprised of Mechanical Systems and Facilities Operations, Electronic Systems and Technology Innovation, Computing Support, DevOps, and HPC/Research Computing groups. His research areas of focus include automotive cybersecurity, large-scale data ingestion and management, and the visualization of naturalistic driving data. Since 2011, he has served as VTTI's Systems Architect and Lead Application Developer, designing and supporting the IT systems responsible for collecting sensor/video data for naturalistic driving data collection, as well as developing client/server, database, and web-based applications to support the retrieval, transfer, ingestion, and analysis of data in global locations. In his time at VTTI, Dr. Bowden has designed and developed data pipelines for several large-scale projects, including the Second Strategic Highway Research Program. He is an adjunct professor for the Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Tech.
Job Titles:
- Chief of Staff ( Interim )
Job Titles:
- Lead Data Scientist
- Professor
Feng Guo is a professor in the Department of Statistics at Virginia Tech and the lead data scientist at VTTI. With dual PhDs in transportation engineering and statistics, his research involves both methodology and application research on quantitative transportation modeling, especially in regard to traffic safety evaluation. His major research interests include the Bayesian method, epidemiology, machine learning and AI, traffic risk prediction, naturalistic driving study modeling, transportation infrastructure safety evaluation, advanced driving evaluation, and automated driving systems. He has served as the chair of the Transportation Statistics Interest Group of the American Statistical Association and is a member of both the Transportation Research Board Committee on Statistical Methods and the Committee on Safety Data, Analysis, and Evaluation of the National Academies. Dr. Guo has been a principal investigator (PI) or co-PI for more than 60 research projects sponsored by industry and federal and state agencies that include the National Institutes of Health, Federal Highway Administration, National Highway Traffic Safety Association, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Job Titles:
- Director / Center for Sustainable Mobility
- Director of the Center for Sustainable Mobility
Dr. Rakha is the Director of the Center for Sustainable Mobility, the Samuel Reynolds Pritchard Professor of Engineering in the Charles E. Via, Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech, and a Courtesy Professor in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is a Professional Engineer in Ontario and a member of the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE), the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), and the Transportation Research Board (TRB). In addition, he is on the Editorial Board of the Transportation Letters: The International Journal of Transportation Research, the IET Intelligent Transport Systems Journal, and the International Journal of Transportation Science and Technology. In addition, he is an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions of Intelligent Transportation Systems, the Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems: Technology, Planning and Operations and an Academic Editor for the Journal of Advanced Transportation. Dr. Rakha's areas of research include traffic flow theory, traveler and driver behavior modeling, dynamic traffic assignment, transportation network control, optimization, use of artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques in transportation, intelligent vehicle systems, connected and autonomous vehicles, transportation energy and environmental modeling, and transportation safety modeling. More information is available at https://sites.google.com/a/vt.edu/hrakha/.
Julie McClafferty is the Project Director within the Division of Data & Analytics at VTTI. She has managed VTTI's data reduction efforts since 2006, annually seeing it through numerous small and large scale projects spanning the ranges of heavy commercial vehicles to light passenger vehicles to motorcycles to, most recently, scooters and pedestrians, naturalistic to test track experimental designs, and teen driver to older driver populations. Her areas of expertise include the video- and audio-based analysis of crash and baseline driving scenarios; driver distraction, drowsiness, and impairment; intersection interactions; in-vehicle technology; collision avoidance systems; vehicle-to-vehicle interactions; and automated driving systems. McClafferty received a M.S. from Virginia Tech in 2000.
Job Titles:
- Program Manager
- Research Associate
Laurel Glenn began her position as a Research Associate in the Division of Data & Analytics at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) in 2010. She has had formal training in experimental design, statistics, and behavioral analysis as well as in community health education and intervention processes. She has had experience in all phases of research including research design, participant recruitment, lab management, data collection, data analysis, and presentation of results. While at VTTI she has assisted on various projects such as examining multiple safety system technologies such as collision warnings, automated vehicle technology and a large-scale commercial driver health and wellness study. She also used her Public Health Education Masters for the development of an evaluation program for a state-run, teen advocacy program for safe driving and evaluating rear seat reminder technology for the prevention of Pediatric Vehicular Heatstroke.
Job Titles:
- Senior Research Associate
- Certified Functional Safety Engineer
Loren Stowe is a Certified Functional Safety Engineer and has been a Senior Research Associate at Virginia Tech Transportation Institute since 2008. Mr. Stowe initially applied his experience in testing and measurement system design and manufacturing to the development and production of VTTI's Data Acquisition Systems. These systems have enabled the unparalleled capture of driving data for programs such as the National Academies' Second Strategic Highway Research Program Naturalistic Driving Study (SHRP 2 NDS), the data from which still plays a critical role within driver safety research and advanced/automated driving system development, simulation, and modeling nearly a decade later. More recently, Mr. Stowe's research has focused on connected vehicles, automated vehicles, and the enabling perception and software systems. He has served as Principal Investigator and Project Manager on both publicly and privately funded projects focused on the development, testing, and evaluation of individual components and vehicle-level systems. His group actively works on perception systems, data processing methods, real-time control systems, computation methods (e.g., machine vision/learning) and the associated software support systems including integration with vehicle networks and over-the-air prognostics, diagnostics, and software updates including cybersecurity provisions.
Luke Neurauter, M.S. serves as Co-Technology Transfer Coordinator for Safe-D. As the T2 Coordinator, Mr. Neuratuer provides a central resource for the development and execution of T2 plans, also a required component for every project. He shares responsibility with Dr. Mollenhauer for maximizing the dissemination of research findings directly to planners and developers of transformation technologies and supporting commercialization.Mr. Neuratuer currently serves as director of the Division of Vehicle, Driver, & System Safety (DVDSS) at VTTI. As director, leads a multifaceted team of transportation researchers encompassing a broad coverage of safety-focused topic areas. His work consists primarily of gathering and analyzing human factors-related data to evaluate prototype concepts and advanced technologies, including ADAS and connected/automated technologies.
Job Titles:
- Group Leader
- Senior Research Associate and Group Leader of the Research to Practice & Outreach Program
Matthew Camden is a Senior Research Associate and Group Leader of the Research to Practice & Outreach Program in VTTI's Division of Freight, Transit, and Heavy Vehicle Safety. He is an expert in occupational driving safety with 14 years of experience solving complex challenges to improve vehicle and driver safety. With a background in industrial and organizational psychology, Mr. Camden specializes in light- and heavy-vehicle fleet safety with an emphasis on developing, evaluating, and implementing occupational safety programs and outreach initiatives to improve driver and vehicle safety performance. Specifically, Mr. Camden's research investigates systems-level solutions to improve operator behavior and organizational safety culture with a focus on accelerating advanced vehicle safety systems, improving operator education and training, reducing driver distraction and fatigue, and preventing operator impairment. He has been the PI/Co-PI or Project Manager on 38 projects totaling over $10 million and has made significant contributions to 14 other projects (totaling over $15.1 million). These projects include funded research projects sponsored by the National Safety Council, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, National Academy of Science, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, Transport Canada, North American Fatigue Management Program, Clear Roads, National Transportation Research Center, Inc., National Surface Transportation Safety Center for Excellence, and numerous proprietary companies. Mr. Camden has over 95 professional presentations and more than 55 publications and technical reports. Although much of his research focuses on commercial motor vehicle drivers, his research portfolio encompasses all types of occupational drivers and the individuals that share the road with them.
Rebecca Hammond, M.S., is a Senior Research Associate and leader of the Heavy Vehicle Programs & Initiatives team in the Division of Freight, Transit, & Heavy Vehicle Safety at VTTI. Ms. Hammond earned a B.S. in Psychology and an M.S. in Human Factors Engineering from Virginia Tech. Since joining VTTI in 2001, Ms. Hammond has managed many heavy vehicle-related transportation studies. These studies include the highly publicized Driver Distraction in Commercial Vehicle Operations study, which led to a texting ban for all heavy-vehicle drivers. Ms. Hammond has experience collecting both on-road data and naturalistic data. She has served as the data reduction manager and expert for the Center since 2004 and has extensive experience in data reduction training, lab management, and quality control. Ms. Hammond has published over 50 scientific publications, including journal articles, conference papers, book chapters, and technical reports.
Job Titles:
- Senior Research Associate
Sondra Iverson is a Senior Research Associate and the Server Application Lead in the Division of Technology Implementation where she works on various software development projects in transportation research involving the collection, storage, analysis, and visualization of large data sets of vehicle information.
She has a diverse background of professional programming experience ranging from 3D computer graphics and artificial intelligence to client-server applications. Sondra has a M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Houston.
Job Titles:
- Research Scientist
- Research Scientist With VTTI 's Division of Data & Analytics
Tammy Trimble, Ph.D., is a research scientist with VTTI's Division of Data & Analytics. Her experience includes over 19 years in transportation policy research at VTTI where she has worked on several policy-related research efforts related to transportation technologies-including automated vehicles-and associated education efforts. Her work exploring the implications of automation for motor vehicle codes was awarded the 2019 TRB John C. Vance Award, which recognizes outstanding contributions to the understanding and implementation of transportation law. Dr. Trimble holds an M.P.A. and Ph.D. in public administration from Virginia Tech and a B.A. in government and public service from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Executive Director