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Reliability Growth: Enhancing Defense System Reliability (2015)

Chapter: Appendix E: Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix E: Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2015. Reliability Growth: Enhancing Defense System Reliability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18987.
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Appendix E

Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff

ARTHUR FRIES (Chair) is a research staff member and project leader at the Institute for Defense Analyses. He has focused on applying statistical methods to issues in various national defense and security sectors—test and evaluation within the U.S. Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism, and risk assessment. He was chair of the American Statistical Association (ASA) Committee on National and International Security, Chair of the ASA Committee on Statisticians in Defense and National Security, and a founding member of the ASA Section on Statistics in Defense and National Security. He is a fellow of the ASA and recipient of the U.S. Army Wilks Award. He holds an M.A. in mathematics and a Ph.D. in statistics, both from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

W. PETER CHERRY is chief analyst at Science Applications International Corporation. His work 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 to the Apache helicopter. He was a member of the Army Science Board and served as chair of the Military Applications Society of the Operations Research Society of America. He is a co-awardee of the Rist Prize of the Military Operations Research Society and an awardee of the Steinhardt Prize of the Military Applications Society of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. He is a member of the

Suggested Citation:"Appendix E: Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2015. Reliability Growth: Enhancing Defense System Reliability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18987.
×

National Academy of Engineering. He holds an M.S. and Ph.D. in industrial and operations engineering from the University of Michigan.

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. 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 at Princeton University. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association. He holds a B.S. in mathematics from the University of Michigan and an M.S. and a Ph.D. in statistics from Stanford University.

ROBERT G. EASTERLING was a senior statistical scientist at the Sandia National Laboratories, where he spent most of his career investigating the applications of statistics to various engineering issues. One of his key research interests has been reliability evaluation. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association, a former editor of the applied statistics journal Technometrics, and a recipient of the American Society for Quality’s Brumbaugh Award. He holds a Ph.D. in statistics from Oklahoma State University.

ELSAYED A. ELSAYED is a distinguished professor of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and a fellow in the Rutgers Business, Engineering, Science and Technology Institute, both at Rutgers University. He is also director of the Industry/University Cooperative Research Center for Quality and Reliability Engineering, under the aegis of the National Science Foundation. His research interests are in the areas of quality and reliability engineering and production planning and control. He is a fellow of the Institute of Industrial Engineers. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Windsor (Canada).

APARNA V. HUZURBAZAR is a research scientist in the Statistical Sciences Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory. At Los Alamos, she also serves as project lead for the Systems Major Technical Elements Enhanced Surveillance Campaign, which provides statistical and analytical support, such as system modeling, age-aware models, tracking and trending data, and uncertainty quantification. She has published extensively in reliability methodology and applications, flowgraph models, Bayesian statistics, and quality control and industrial statistics. She is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. She holds a Ph.D. in statistics from Colorado State University.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix E: Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2015. Reliability Growth: Enhancing Defense System Reliability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18987.
×

PATRICIA A. JACOBS is a distinguished professor in the Department of Operations Research at the Naval Postgraduate School. For most of her career, she has focused on defense issues involving statistics and operations research, including reliability modeling. She is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and the Royal Statistical Society and is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. She holds an M.S. in industrial engineering and management sciences and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics, both from Northwestern University.

WILLIAM Q. MEEKER, JR. is a distinguished professor of liberal arts and sciences and professor in the Department of Statistics at Iowa State University. His major research has been on statistical methods for reliability data. He is a three-time recipient of the Frank Wilcoxon prize for the best practical application paper in Technometrics, a four-time recipient of the W.J. Youden prize for the best expository paper in Technometrics, and a recipient of the Shewhart Medal for outstanding technical leadership in the field of modern quality control. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association, an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, and a fellow of the American Society for Quality. He received his Ph.D. in administrative and engineering systems from Union College.

NACHI NAGAPPAN works on empirical software engineering and measurement at Microsoft Research. His research interests are in the fields of software reliability, software measurement and testing, and empirical software engineering. He has also worked on social factors in software engineering, aspect-oriented software development, and computer science education. His current research focuses on the application of software measurement and statistical modeling to large software systems and the next-generation Windows operating system (Vista). He holds a Ph.D. from North Carolina State University.

MICHAEL PECHT is George E. Dieter professor of mechanical engineering and a professor of applied mathematics at the University of Maryland. At the university, he was the founder of the Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering, which is funded by more than 150 of the world’s leading electronics companies. His main research interest is the development of reliable electronics products and use and supply chain management. He is a licensed professional engineer in the state of Maryland. He is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a fellow of ASME, a fellow of the Society of Automotive Engineers, and a fellow of the International Microelectronics Assembly and Packaging Society. He is a recipient of the exceptional technical achievement award and the lifetime achievement

Suggested Citation:"Appendix E: Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2015. Reliability Growth: Enhancing Defense System Reliability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18987.
×

award of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

ANANDA SEN is an associate research scientist at the Center for Statistical Consultation and Research at the University of Michigan. Previously, he held teaching appointments at Oakland University and the University of Michigan. His primary work focuses on the understanding of reliability growth modeling, accelerated failure-time modeling, and Bayesian methodologies in reliability and survival analysis. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. He holds an M.S. in statistics from the Indian Statistical Institute and a Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

SCOTT VANDER WIEL is technical staff member at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Previously, he conducted statistics research at Bell Laboratory. In his work, he collaborates with engineers and scientists to analyze data and develop statistical methodology in system reliability (and other areas of the application of statistics). At Los Alamos, he has focused on weapons reliability modeling and uncertainty quantification. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association. He holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in statistics from Iowa State University.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix E: Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2015. Reliability Growth: Enhancing Defense System Reliability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18987.
×
Page 247
Suggested Citation:"Appendix E: Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2015. Reliability Growth: Enhancing Defense System Reliability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18987.
×
Page 248
Suggested Citation:"Appendix E: Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2015. Reliability Growth: Enhancing Defense System Reliability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18987.
×
Page 249
Suggested Citation:"Appendix E: Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2015. Reliability Growth: Enhancing Defense System Reliability. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18987.
×
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A high percentage of defense systems fail to meet their reliability requirements. This is a serious problem for the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), as well as the nation. Those systems are not only less likely to successfully carry out their intended missions, but they also could endanger the lives of the operators. Furthermore, reliability failures discovered after deployment can result in costly and strategic delays and the need for expensive redesign, which often limits the tactical situations in which the system can be used. Finally, systems that fail to meet their reliability requirements are much more likely to need additional scheduled and unscheduled maintenance and to need more spare parts and possibly replacement systems, all of which can substantially increase the life-cycle costs of a system.

Beginning in 2008, DOD undertook a concerted effort to raise the priority of reliability through greater use of design for reliability techniques, reliability growth testing, and formal reliability growth modeling, by both the contractors and DOD units. To this end, handbooks, guidances, and formal memoranda were revised or newly issued to reduce the frequency of reliability deficiencies for defense systems in operational testing and the effects of those deficiencies. Reliability Growth evaluates these recent changes and, more generally, assesses how current DOD principles and practices could be modified to increase the likelihood that defense systems will satisfy their reliability requirements. This report examines changes to the reliability requirements for proposed systems; defines modern design and testing for reliability; discusses the contractor's role in reliability testing; and summarizes the current state of formal reliability growth modeling. The recommendations of Reliability Growth will improve the reliability of defense systems and protect the health of the valuable personnel who operate them.

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