GVSC Leaders

David Gorsich, Ph.D.
ExCom Member
Chief Scientist, U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Center (CCDC) Ground Vehicle Systems Center (GVSC)

Dr. David Gorsich was selected for a Scientific and Professional (ST) position in January 2009 and serves as the Army’s Chief Scientist for Ground Vehicle Systems. His current research interests are vehicle dynamics and structural analysis, reliability based design optimization, underbody blast modeling, terrain modeling and spatial statistics.

Prior to his current position, Gorsich served as the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center’s (TARDEC’s) Associate Director, Modeling and Simulation (M&S), from July 2003 to December 2008. He has also served as the Acting Director, Strategic Plans and Programs, and the Team Leader for Robotics and Vehicle Intelligence. He served in various assignments at TARDEC, the Army Materiel Command, the Army Research Laboratory and for the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Acquisitions, Logistics and Technology). Gorsich previously was an electrical engineer with McGraw Commercial Equipment Corporation in Novi, MI.

Gorsich was named a Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Fellow in 2008. He has served on the SAE Technical Standards Board for a 3-year term, been the chair for the SAE International Standards Committee for Ground Vehicle Reliability and also on the SAE Board of Directors. He has received several Commander’s Coins, including: U.S. Army Central Command, GEN John Abizad, High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles Safety/Seat Experiments, 2005; Chief of Staff, GEN Peter Schoomaker, TARDEC M&S, 2005; West Virginia National Guard, 2004; U.S. Army TACOM, MG William M. Lenaers, Army-SAE Partnership, 2004; U.S. Army TACOM, MG N. Ross Thompson, Reliability, 2003. Gorsich received the Detroit Federal Executive Board Award in 2001. Gorsich was recognized with the 1997 Army Research, Development and Acquisition Award, “Innovations in Ground Vehicle Signature Research.”

Dr. Gorsich is recognized in many professional organizations for his research accomplishments. Gorsich serves as an Associate Editor for the International Journal of Terramechanics, and on the Editorial Board of the International Journal for Reliability and Safety, and as past Associate Editor for the Journal of Mechanical Design. He is a member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Chapter of Sigma Xi, the Material Parts and Processes Council of SAE and the Senior Executives Association, ST Chapter.

Dr. Gorsich has published more than 150 conference and journal articles including more than 50 peer reviewed journal articles. He has published in the following peer reviewed journals: Transactions of SAE; International Journal of Vehicle Design; Journal of Mechanical Design; Journal of Commercial Vehicles; Contemporary Mathematics; Computational Statistics and Data Analysis; Physical Review D; Society of Automotive Engineers; Journal of Multivariate Analysis; Journal of Electronic Imaging; Optical Engineering; Pattern Recognition Letters; Statistics and Computing; Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

Gorsich holds a B.S. in electrical engineering from Lawrence Technological University. He holds an M.S. in applied mathematics from George Washington University and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from MIT.

Richard Gerth, Ph.D.
ExCom Member
Deputy Chief Scientist, U.S. Army CCDC GVSC

Dr. Richard Gerth is the Deputy Chief Scientist for the U.S. Army’s Combat Capabilities Development Center (CCDC) Ground Vehicle Systems Center (GVSC). The Chief Scientist’s Office is responsible for managing TARDEC’s basic research portfolio as well as promoting the growth and development of its research workforce. Prior to his current position, Dr. Gerth was a Senior Research Engineer on the Materials Application and Integration team responsible for conducting research in vehicle lightweighting technologies. His primary research interests are in high Manganese steels, operational metrics for weight reduction in military vehicles, and open innovation processes. Dr. Gerth has over 60 publications and presented at numerous national and international conferences. He earned his B.S. from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor.

Robert Sadowski, Ph.D.
ExCom Member
Chief Roboticist, U.S. Army CCDC GVSC

Dr. Robert W. Sadowski is a member of the Scientific and Professional (ST) cadre of the Senior Executive Service and serves as the Robotics Senior Research Scientist within the Research, Technology and Integration Directorate at the US Army Combat Capabilities Development Center (CCDC) Ground Vehicle Systems Center (GVSC) in Warren, MI. He has been recently selected to this position after a long career within the Army culminating as an Academy Professor and Electrical Engineering Program Director in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the United States Military Academy where he was instrumental in developing the Academy’s robotics program, facilities, and outreach. He also has over forty months of operational experience in Southwest Asia in a variety of leadership, staff, and engineering positions including Iraq and recently Afghanistan. Dr. Sadowski is a graduate of US Military Academy with a BSEE and received his M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University as a Fannie and John Hertz Fellow. He also holds a Masters in Strategic Studies from the US Army War College.

Paramsothy Jayakumar, Ph.D.
Thrust Area 1 Co-Leader
Senior Research Scientist, Analytics; SAE Fellow; U.S. Army CCDC GVSC
paramsothy.jayakumar.civ@mail.mil

Dr. Paramsothy Jayakumar is a Senior Technical Expert in Modeling and Simulation (M&S), SAE Fellow, and a member of the Analytics organization at the U.S. Army Ground Vehicle Systems Center (GVSC, formerly TARDEC) in Warren, Michigan. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in structural dynamics from the California Institute of Technology, and B.Sc. Eng. (Hons, First Class) from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. He began his career with the U.S. Army TARDEC in 2009 following employment with Ford Motor Company, BAE Systems, and Engineering Mechanics Research Corporation. He has worked in research, development, and engineering of ground vehicle mobility, on-road & off-road, and intelligent vehicles. Dr. Jayakumar is the recognized leader in the field of mobility and vehicle dynamics M&S in the DoD and automotive communities.

In addition to his personal accomplishments, Dr. Jayakumar is also an exemplary team builder, bringing together experts from the DoD, NATO, Academia, National Labs, and Industry to advance mobility research and development. He co-leads the Intelligent Vehicle Dynamics and Control thrust area for the Automotive Research Center, a U.S. Army Center of Excellence for Modeling and Simulation of Ground Vehicles. In that capacity, Dr. Jayakumar developed and successfully implemented a roadmap toward achieving the goal of autonomous mobility through M&S. He also led a NATO S&T Team that developed the Next-Generation NATO Reference Mobility Model (NG-NRMM) to replace the decades-old empirical model with a physics-based approach thus accommodating new vehicle designs, technologies, and M&S capabilities.

Dr. Jayakumar has written more than 200 technical publications including 2 book chapters, 50 journal articles and 100 conference papers, delivered 50 invited speeches, and holds two patents. He serves as an Associate Editor of the ASME Journal of Computational and Nonlinear Dynamics, and an Editorial Board Member for the International Journal of Vehicle Performance and the Journal of Terramechanics. His research in terramechanics, vehicle dynamics, and mobility won the best paper awards at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Ground Vehicle Systems Engineering and Technology Symposium in 2011, 2012, and 2016. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Automotive Engineers in 2013. He was also instrumental in developing seven SAE standards for tire testing for the purpose of tire modeling for which he received the SAE 2014 James M. Crawford Technical Standards Board Outstanding Achievement Award and Arch T. Colwell Cooperative Engineering Medal. His accomplishments at the U.S. Army TARDEC have been recognized with his competitive appointment in 2015 as the Senior Technical Expert for Analytics. In 2016, Dr. Jayakumar was awarded the Department of Defense Laboratory Scientist of the Quarter Award by Hon. Frank Kendall, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, for outstanding achievement in laboratory science and engineering.

Jonathon Smereka, Ph.D. Thrust Area 1 Co-Leader
U.S. Army CCDC GVSC jonathon.m.smereka.civ@mail.mil

Dr. Jonathon Smereka is a researcher within the Ground Vehicle Robotics (GVR) team at the U.S. Army CCDC Ground Vehicle Systems Center (GVSC) in Warren, Michigan. Currently, Dr. Smereka is responsible for guiding in-house research and future development activities contributing to the TARDEC Robotics Technology Kernel (RTK) software. His own research focuses on machine learning and artificial intelligence related to robotic behaviors, vehicle perception, and scene understanding. He earned a PhD in Computer and Electrical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2016 under the direction of Prof. Vijayakumar Bhagavatula.

Victor Paul
Thrust Area 2 Leader
Team Leader, System Ground Vehicle Simulation Laboratory (GVSL), U.S. Army CCDC GVSC
victor.j.paul2.civ@mail.mil

Mr. Paul serves as a Team Leader in the Ground Vehicle System Center’s System Ground Vehicle Simulation Laboratory (GVSL) where he has worked for 28 years. He holds extensive knowledge in the area of motion base simulation and its application in both man and hardware in the loop experiments. He is currently a senior adviser for the Crew Optimization and Augmentation Technologies Science and Technology program and is supporting the development of Crew Station and Squad interfaces for the Next Generation Combat Vehicle – Mission Enabling Technology – Demonstrator.

David A. Lamb, Ph.D.
Thrust Area 3 Leader
Research Computer Scientist, US Army CCDC GVSC
david.a.lamb40.civ@mail.mil

Dr. David Lamb is an applied mathematician and computer scientist working for the U.S. Army. His personal research is in optimization, especially optimization under uncertainty. He has a B.S. with honors from George Mason University in 1985, where he majored in mathematics. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1992, under the direction of Prof. Ken Kunen, with a major in mathematics and a minor in computer sciences. He is active with SAE, where he is currently the chairman of the Ground Vehicle Reliability committee, and also with SIAM, where he is the co-President of the Great Lakes Section. He has worked for the U.S. Army Tank-automotive Research, Development, and Engineering Center (TARDEC), presently the CCDC Ground Vehicle Systems Center (GVSC), since 1994.

Peter Schihl, Ph.D., P.E.
Thrust Area 4 Co-Leader
Senior Technical Expert, Ground Vehicle Power and Mobility Laboratory (GVPM), U.S. Army CCDC GVSC
peter.j.schihl.civ@mail.mil

Dr. Schihl is currently the Senior Technical Expert of the CCDC GVSC Ground Vehicle Propulsion and Mobility Laboratory and has worked at TARDEC since 1991. His research throughout the last eighteen years has concentrated on developing and experimentally validating simplified combustion and ignition models for military relevant diesel engines and most recently has focused on combustion characteristic differences between diesel fuel and JP-8, and other relevant military heavy fuels. To date, many articles have resulted from his work and he has received the ‘Best Paper in Session’ award at the 1996, 1998, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2010 Army Science Conferences and twice has received Department of Army Research and Development Achievement Awards (2005 and 2009). Dr. Schihl is a reviewer for SAE, ASME, and the Journal of Engine Research in his subject field of expertise, and since 1998 has been an invited reviewer at various Department of Energy Advanced Compression Ignition Engine Technology National Lab reviews. Dr. Schihl earned a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan that was focused on diesel combustion systems and has M.S. and B.S. degrees in Mechanical and Systems Engineering from Oakland University where he also received a four year, full-ride basketball scholarship to play for Coach Greg Kampe. Previous to the Army, he worked as a graduate research assistant at Oakland University studying the use of photo-thermal radiometry for assessing thin coating thermal properties and also was a research assistant at the General Motors Research Laboratory studying the use of telemetry for indirectly measuring tappet stress in a 3.1 liter Chevrolet engine. He is currently an adjunct faculty member at Lawrence Technological University where he has taught Heat Transfer and currently holds a State of Michigan boy’s high school state record for blocked shots in a playoff game.

Denise Rizzo, Ph.D.
Thrust Area 4 Co-Leader
Research Mechanical Engineer, U.S. Army CCDC GVSC
denise.m.rizzo2.civ@mail.mil

Dr. Denise M. Rizzo is a Senior Research Mechanical Engineer for the Vehicle Performance Modeling & Team at U.S. Army Ground Vehicle System Center (GVSC). She specializes in modeling, simulation and control of propulsion systems of ground vehicles. Dr. Rizzo received her Ph.D. from Michigan Technological University in 2014. From 2000 through 2008 she was a controls research and development engineer in the Powertrain Group at Chrysler LLC. She joined GVSC in November of 2008 and was promoted to her current position in 2017. Dr. Rizzo has received 8 awards for outstanding contributions during her time at GVSC, which include J. Cordell Breed Award for Women Leaders awarded by the Society of Automotive Engineers in 2017, a Horizon Award for product development awarded by the Women in Defense in 2016 and a best paper award for an article in the Journal of Systems and Control awarded by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 2010. She is a Fellow of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), and member of Society of Women Engineers (SWE), National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) and Women in Defense (WID). Dr. Rizzo has published 17 articles in archival journals, 30 papers in refereed conference proceedings, 4 technical government reports, and holds 2 patents.

Matt Castanier, Ph.D.
Thrust Area 5 Leader
Research Mechanical Engineer, U.S. Army CCDC GVSC
matthew.p.castanier.civ@mail.mil

Dr. Matt Castanier is a Research Mechanical Engineer at the U.S. Army CCDC Ground Vehicle Systems Center (GVSC) in Warren, MI. His research interests include powertrain modeling and simulation, multidisciplinary design optimization, and trade space exploration. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan (UM) in 1995. From 1996 through 2008 he was a member of the research faculty at UM. He joined GVSC in 2008 and was promoted to his current position in 2011. Dr. Castanier has published more than 45 journal articles and over 95 conference papers. He currently serves as the Vice Chair of the SAE Integrated Design and Manufacturing (IDM) Activity.