Ravi Thyagarajan

Educational Background

- 13 years of government experience as DoD/Army civilian culminating as the Portfolio Director for Basic Research, Ground and Air platforms in the US Army Futures Command (AFC), Austin. Responsible for strategic direction of Army Science and Technology (S&T) program objectives and priorities, and to defend key policy initiatives in 5-year plans to Army senior leadership and Congress.
- Deputy Chief Scientist, US Army Ground Vehicle Systems Center (GVSC), Michigan: Managed the Basic Research program, served on GVSC Executive Committee (EXCOM) and Deputies Council for strategic administration of the laboratory.
- Technical Fellow, US Army GVSC: led deployment of M&S methods to support development of hulls and seats for protection of military ground vehicles and occupants against underbody blast; pre-shot predictions for Verification / Validation / Accreditation.
- 17 years of automotive industry experience with Ford and Visteon in leading teams in all aspects of automotive interior engineering - benchmarking, clay feasibility, component and system design, simulation-based engineering, design and release, testing, product launch and production/manufacturing support.
- Conceived and grew the Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) group in Ford Interior Systems division. Drove CAE to become part of the nominal product design process in Durability, NVH and Safety.

2021 Superior Civilian Service Medal awarded by Secretary of the Army
2021, 2019, 2016, 2002, 2000: Five US patents in defense and automotive technologies
2020 NATO Science & Technology Organization AVT Panel Excellence Award: Next-Gen NATO Reference Mobility Model (NRMM) Development and Demonstration Team
2020 US Army Futures Command Civilian Service Commendation Award for Civilian Service
2019, 2015, 2013: Three-time winner of Best Technical Paper Award at the Ground Vehicle Systems Engineering and Technology Symposium (GVSETS)
2018 Elected as Fellow of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE)
2017 Recipient of the US Army Commander’s Award for Civilian Service
2013 Forest R. McFarland Award for outstanding contributions to SAE
2012 US Army Materiel Command (AMC) Systems Analysis Award (Small Group)
2010 US AMC Systems Analysis Award (Large Group)
2002 President’s Level Customer-Driven Visteon Quality Award (CDQA) for the Ford Explorer Lightweight Instrument Panel Structure.
1995 Ford Customer-Driven Quality Award (CDQA) of Excellence for Customer Satisfaction for the Ford Explorer Console Shake Reduction
1984 The Banco Foundation Gold Medal for undergraduate student with the best academic record in Mechanical Engineering

An Innovative Service Load-Agnostic Structural Light-Weighting Design Optimization Methodology, Paper No. 2021-01-0253, SAE International Journal of Advances and Current Practices in Mobility, 2021
Systematic Development of Framework for Validation and Performance Quantification of Additively Manufactured Replacement Parts for Structural Steel Applications, Proceedings of the NDIA Ground Vehicle Systems Engineering and Technology Symposium, 2019
Assessment of the Accuracy of Certain Reduced Order Models used in the Prediction of Occupant Injury during Under-Body Blast Events, SAE International Journal of Transportation Safety, 2014
Evaluating the Effectiveness of Various Blast Loading Descriptors as Occupant Injury Predictors for Underbody Blast Events, Proceedings of the NDIA Ground Vehicle Systems Engineering and Technology Symposium, 2013
Modeling and Analysis of Hysteretic Structural Behavior, Ph D dissertation, California Institute of Technology, 1990