GVSC Leaders
Dr. David Gorsich
David Gorsich, Ph.D.
ExCom Member
Chief Scientist, U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) 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.
Dr. Robert Sadowski
Robert Sadowski, Ph.D.
ExCom Member
Chief Roboticist, U.S. Army DEVCOM 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 Command (DEVCOM) 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.
Dr. Philip A Frederick
Philip A Frederick, Ph.D.
Excom Member
Deputy Chief Scientist, U.S. Army DEVCOM GVSC
philip.a.frederick.civ@army.mil
Dr. Philip Frederick has 25 years of experience working in Army ground vehicle robotics.. Prior to his role as GVSC Deputy Chief Scientist he was a Division Chief in Ground Vehicle Robotics (GVR) where he oversaw the Army’s Interoperability Profiles (IOP) that have become a SAE and NATO standard and he initiated and managed the creation of the Army’s modular autonomy software library the Robotic Technology Kernel (RTK). Philip has published over 25 peer reviewed papers and journals in the fields of autonomy and machine learning (including invited and best session papers). Philip has Bachelor’s degrees in Electrical and Systems Engineering, a Masters degree in Control System Engineering and PhD in Systems Engineering from Oakland University.
Dr. Mark Brudnak
Mark Brudnak, Ph.D.
Excom Member
Senior Technical Expert for GVSC’s Immersive Simulation Directorate, U.S. Army DEVCOM GVSC
mark.j.brudnak.civ@army.mil
Dr. Mark J. Brudnak is the Senior Technical Expert for GVSC’s Immersive Simulation Directorate. In this role he is the senior technical advisor for an organization focused on providing developing and delivering simulations for warfighter virtual experiments, crewstation development and robotic and autonomy simulation. Prior to this technical role, he served as an Associate Director for 6 years. Dr. Brudnak also served as Senior Research Engineer in the Physical Simulation Laboratory where he specialized in the design, development and execution of solider-in-the-loop experiments. As such he was responsible for all aspects of the experiment from scenario, to protocol, to technical integration of the simulation and analysis of the results. Dr. Brudnak has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Lawrence Technological University, a Master’s of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Oakland University and a Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from Oakland University as well.
Dr. Jonathon Smereka
Jonathon Smereka, Ph.D.
Thrust Area 1 Co-Leader
Ground Vehicle Robotics (GVR) Senior Technical Expert, U.S. Army DEVCOM GVSC
jonathon.m.smereka.civ@army.mil
Dr. Jonathon Smereka is the Ground Vehicle Robotics (GVR) Senior Technical Expert for research at the U.S. Army DEVCOM Ground Vehicle Systems Center (GVSC, formerly TARDEC) in Warren, Michigan. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer and Electrical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2016 and B.Sc. Eng. degrees in Computer Engineer, Electrical Engineering, and Engineering Mathematics from the University of Michigan at Dearborn in 2009. He began his career with the U.S. Army TARDEC in 2007 as a Co-Op intern with the High Performance Computing (HPC) team, left for graduate school in 2010, and then rejoined again in 2016 through the DoD Science, Mathematics, and Research for Transformation (SMART) Fellowship. He has worked in research and development of artificial intelligence, machine learning, image and signal processing, and computer vision with respect to biometrics, automated target recognition (ATR), and ground vehicle autonomy.
Dr. Paramsothy Jayakumar
Paramsothy Jayakumar, Ph.D.
ExCom Member
Senior Research Scientist, Analytics; SAE Fellow; U.S. Army DEVCOM GVSC
paramsothy.jayakumar.civ@army.mil
Mr. Victor Paul
Victor Paul
Thrust Area 2 Leader
Team Leader, System Ground Vehicle Simulation Laboratory (GVSL), U.S. Army DEVCOM GVSC
victor.j.paul2.civ@army.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.
Dr. Katherine Sebeck
Katherine Sebeck, Ph.D.
Thrust Area 3 Leader
Research Materials Engineer, U.S. Army DEVCOM GVSC
katherine.m.sebeck.civ@army.mil
Dr. Katherine Sebeck is a Research Materials Engineer for the Materials Application and Integration Team at US Army Ground Vehicle System Center (GVSC). She specializes in maturation of materials for military applications, as well as materials modeling. Dr. Sebeck received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2015, at which time she joined GVSC as a Science, Mathematics and Research for Transformation (SMART) Scholar. She was also a recipient of the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate fellowship from 2010 to 2013, and the J. Robert Beyster Computational Innovation Graduate Fellow in 2013-14. She is a member of ASM International and TMS. She is a co-author of 12 peer reviewed journal papers and refereed conference proceedings.
Dr. Peter Schihl
Peter Schihl, Ph.D., P.E.
Thrust Area 4 Co-Leader
Senior Technical Expert, Ground Vehicle Power and Mobility Laboratory (GVPM), U.S. Army DEVCOM GVSC
peter.j.schihl.civ@army.mil
Dr. Schihl is currently the Senior Technical Expert of the DEVCOM 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.
Dr. Vamshi Korivi
Vamshi Korivi, Ph.D.
Thrust Area 4 Co-Leader
Branch Chief, Fluid, Thermal & Signature Team, U.S. Army DEVCOM GVSC
vamshi.m.korivi.civ@army.mil
Dr. Korivi is presently working as the branch chief for the Fluid, Thermal & Signature modeling team at GVSC where he oversees fluid & thermal simulation work related to Army ground combat vehicles and combat support systems. Prior to joining GVSC, Dr. Korivi worked as a senior technical specialist in the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Centre of Competency (COC) at Chrysler Corporation. Dr. Korivi has 25 years of experience in the area of CFD and his work resulted in more than thirty technical publications. Dr. Korivi received his Ph. D. degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1995 with emphasis in CFD from Old Dominion University, Virginia. During his graduate school years, he worked as a graduate research assistant at NASA Langley research center for five years.
Dr. Matt Castanier
Matt Castanier, Ph.D.
Thrust Area 5 Co-Leader
Research Mechanical Engineer, U.S. Army DEVCOM GVSC
matthew.p.castanier.civ@army.mil
Dr. Matt Castanier is a Research Mechanical Engineer at the U.S. Army DEVCOM 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 50 journal articles and over 100 conference papers.
Dr. Stephen Rapp
Stephen Rapp, Ph.D.
Thrust Area 5 Co-Leader
Technical Specialist, U.S. Army DEVCOM GVSC
stephen.h.rapp.civ@army.mil
Stephen Rapp was born in Huntingdon, PA, USA. He was appointed to the U. S. Naval Academy graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering and Finance. He became a Marine Officer specializing in armor and later space defense. He supported combat operations in Beirut and Grenada and participated in combat during Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom. He attended the Naval Postgraduate School graduating with a Master of Science in Operations Research, specializing in Engineering Optimization. His thesis, a discrete network optimization for rapid mobilization won the Tisdale Prize for “the thesis most likely to improve national defense” and later the INFORMS, Koopman Prize.
In business, Steve pursued a career as a project and program manager in multiple companies, first in classified space programs and then consulting for large data mining and warehousing for IBM. Then at CSC Consulting as a Principal, and Cap Gemini as a Director and Vice President, he worked and managed change programs for Dupont, AIG, AT&T, GM and Ford. Later, at General Dynamics he worked and managed multiple vehicle programs until retiring to pursue his PhD full time at Wayne State University on an ASEE fellowship as a SMART Scholar. He completed his PhD in Industrial Engineering there and is also an adjunct, teaching Decision & Risk Analysis and Six Sigma.
He is currently a senior scientist, at the U. S. Army DEVCOM GVSC in Warren, MI where he is the Trade Study Subject Technical Expert for GVSC