Summit Speaker

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.