Biographical Sketches of
Panel Members and Staff
VIJAY NAIR (Chair) is Donald A. Darling professor of statistics and professor of industrial and operations engineering at the University of Michigan. His past experience includes 15 years as a research scientist at Bell Laboratories. He has a broad range of interests in statistical methodology and applications, especially in engineering statistics. He is president-elect of the International Statistical Institute and president of the International Society for Business and Industrial Statistics. He is a senior fellow of the Michigan Society of Fellows and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society for Quality, the American Statistical Association, and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. He is a former editor of Technometrics and the International Statistical Review. He has also served as chair of the board of trustees of the National Institute of Statistical Sciences. He has a Ph.D. in statistics from the University of California, Berkeley.
CHARLES E. (PETE) ADOLPH is an independent consultant with several decades of experience in testing and evaluation and acquisition management. He began his career with General Dynamics Convair as a flight test engineer at Edwards Air Force Base; served as a U.S. Air Force officer; held a variety of civilian engineering and systems acquisition, technical, and management positions with the Air Force; and served as the technical director, the senior civilian position at the Air Force Flight Test Center. He also held several positions in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, including director of test and evaluation in the Office of
the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology. He also held senior management positions with Science Applications International Corporation. He received a B.S. in aeronautical engineering from St. Louis University, an M.S. in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from the University of Michigan, and an M.S. in systems management from the University of Southern California.
W. PETER CHERRY recently retired from his position as chief analyst at Science Applications International Corporation, where his research interests included the design, development, and test and evaluation of large-scale systems with emphasis on network centricity. He has focused on the development and application of operations research in the national security domain, primarily in the field of land combat. He contributed to the development and fielding of most of the major systems currently employed by the Army, ranging from the Patriot Missile System to the Apache helicopter, as well as the command, control, and intelligence systems currently in use. In addition, he contributed to the creation of the Army’s Manpower Personnel and Human Factors and Training Program and to the Army’s Embedded Training Initiative. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He has a B.A. from the University of New Brunswick and an M.A. from the University of Toronto, both in mathematics. He also holds an M.S. and Ph.D. in industrial and operations engineering from the University of Michigan.
JOHN D. CHRISTIE is senior fellow at the Logistics Management Institute. He has an extensive background in U.S. Department of Defense acquisition policy, program analysis, and resource allocation, having served as director of acquisition policy and program integration for the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition. In that position, he prepared a comprehensive revision of all defense acquisition policies and procedures, resulting in the cancellation and consolidation of 500 prior separate issuances. He also prepared comprehensive acquisition program alternatives for the secretary of defense that resulted in budget reductions of billions of dollars. He has S.B., S.M., E.M.E., and Sc.D. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, all in mechanical engineering.
THOMAS P. CHRISTIE, an independent consultant, last served as the director of operational test and evaluation for the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). In that position, he advised and consulted with the secretary of defense and senior assistants in setting DOD policy and procedures for the testing of new weapon systems, weapons support systems, equipment, and munitions. In his career at DOD, he also served as
director of program integration for the Office of the Under Secretary for Acquisitions and Technology and in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense and in the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for General Purpose Programs. Previously, he served as director of the weapon system analysis division at the Air Force Armament Laboratory at Eglin Air Force Base. In addition to his career at DOD, he worked on DOD weapons testing at the Institute for Defense Analyses. He holds a B.S. in mathematics from Spring Hill College and an M.S. in applied mathematics from New York University.
MICHAEL L. COHEN (Study Director) is a senior program officer for the Committee on National Statistics where he directs studies involving statistical methodology, in particular, on defense system testing and decennial census methodology. He has also recently worked on the prevention and treatment of missing data in clinical trials and data mining applied to counterterrorism. Formerly, he was a mathematical statistician at the Energy Information Administration, an assistant professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland, and a visiting lecturer in the Department of Statistics at Princeton University. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association. He has a B.S. in mathematics from the University of Michigan and an M.S. and a Ph.D. in statistics from Stanford University.
A. BLANTON GODFREY is dean and Joseph D. Moore professor of textile and apparel technology and management at the College of Textiles, North Carolina State University. His research interests include business management and new product development, quality and productivity management, strategic planning and deployment, experimental design, reliability, data analysis, and applied statistics. Previously, he was chair and chief executive officer of the Juran Institute, Inc., a management consulting, research, and training organization focused on quality management. He previously also served as head of the Quality Theory and Technology Department of AT&T Bell Laboratories. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and of the American Society for Quality and an elected member of Sigma Xi. He received a B.S. in physics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and an M.S. and a Ph.D. in statistics from Florida State University.
RAJ KAWLRA is director of dimensional management and strategies for manufacturing engineering at the Chrysler Group, LLC. His previous positions at Chrysler included director of manufacturing quality, with responsibility for quality systems, procedures, and processes, including vehicle assembly, powertrain, and stamping facilities. His prior work at
General Motors (GM) included serving as an adviser to the company’s lean manufacturing core planning team and as the engineering group manager for the math-based quality systems at the GM Tech Center. His primary focus has been on the development of new technologies to improve quality and throughput. He received a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Banaras Hindu University in India; an M.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison; an M.S. in industrial engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and a Ph.D. in industrial and operations engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
JOHN E. ROLPH is professor of statistics at the Marshall School of Business of the University of Southern California, where he also holds appointments in the mathematics department and the law school. Previously, he was a statistician at the RAND Corporation and head of the statistical research and consulting group. His areas of expertise include statistics and public policy and empirical Bayes estimation. He is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, a fellow of the American Statistical Association, a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and a lifetime national associate of the National Academies. He is a past editor of CHANCE magazine and has served in many other editorial capacities. He has a Ph.D. in statistics from the University of California, Berkeley.
ELAINE WEYUKER is a principal technical staff member at AT&T Laboratories. Previously, she was a professor of computer science at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University. Her research interests are in software engineering, particularly software testing and reliability and software metrics. In each of the past 6 years, the Journal of Systems and Software has rated her as one of the top five software engineering researchers in the world. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and of the Association of Computing Machinery. She received an M.S.E. from the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in computer science from Rutgers University.
MARION L. WILLIAMS is an adjunct research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses. Prior to this position, he served as chief scientist and technical director of the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center. He previously served as an aerodynamicist at Sandia National Laboratories and as an adjunct professor in the electrical engineering department at the University of New Mexico. He has been a member of numerous scientific panels, including the Defense Science Board study
on developmental test and evaluation and the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board studies on test and evaluation, modeling and simulation, and electronic warfare. Among his many awards are the Vance Wanner Award from the Military Operations Research Society, the Allan Matthews Award from the International Test and Evaluation Association, and the Air Force Association citation of honor. He received a B.S. in aeronautical engineering from Texas A&M University, an M.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of New Mexico, and a Ph.D. in industrial engineering and management (operations research) from Oklahoma State University.
ALYSON G. WILSON is a research staff member at the Science and Technology Policy Institute of the Institute for Defense Analyses in Washington, DC. Previously, she was with the Department of Statistics at Iowa State University, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and she was a biomedical researcher at the National Institutes of Health. She also served as a senior statistician and operations research analyst with Cowboy Programming Resources, where she planned, executed, and analyzed U.S. Army air defense artillery operational evaluations. Her research interests include reliability and information combination in scientific problems, Bayesian methods, and the application of statistics to problems in defense and national security. She has served on numerous national panels, including the Sandia National Laboratories’ Predictive Engineering Science Panel. She is a fellow of the American Statistical Association. She holds a B.A. in mathematical sciences from Rice University, an M.S. in statistics from Carnegie Mellon University, and a Ph.D. in statistics from Duke University.
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