Zachary Doerzaph has been appointed the executive director of the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) effective Oct. 1.
He follows the legacy of Tom Dingus, the Newport News Shipbuilding Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics, who was VTTI’s director for 25 years and stepped down Aug. 1.
“Zac Doerzaph is a nationally recognized transportation researcher with extensive leadership experience in large team projects from different sponsors,” said Dan Sui, vice president for research and innovation at Virginia Tech. “His intimate knowledge about Virginia Tech’s institutional culture made him the ideal candidate to lead the university’s largest research institute at this critical time.”
In addition to leading the largest group of driving safety researchers in the world, Doerzaph will also take on the role of president of VTT LLC, a nonprofit, university-affiliated corporation of the Virginia Tech Foundation that operates the Global Center for Automotive Performance Simulation in Halifax County, Va.
Doerzaph, who is also an associate professor of biomedical engineering and mechanics, will oversee the university’s largest research institute, which conducts more than 300 research projects in partnership with more than 100 public and private organizations to improve transportation safety nationally and globally. The institute historically has approached $50 million in externally sponsored awards and accounts for 12 to 15 percent of sponsored research at Virginia Tech.
Over Doerzaph’s professional career, his research focus has been on measuring and improving the performance of next generation vehicle systems. His research projects emphasize safety as it relates to the interactions between the driver, vehicle, and infrastructure with local, state, national, and global implications.
Doerzaph’s nationally recognized research portfolio has resulted in extensive collaborations with policymakers, infrastructure owner operators, and the automotive and transportation industry. His team often works with public private partnerships, including a portfolio of connected vehicle studies dating back well over a decade with the Crash Avoidance Metrics Partnership, the Virginia Department of Transportation, and the United States Department of Transportation. He also works alongside numerous automotive manufacturers and a broad array of suppliers to develop and evaluate their prototype technologies prior to public announcement or production release.
In his prior position as the director of VTTI’s Division of Vehicle, Driver, and System Safety, Doerzaph guided a team of 62 faculty, staff, and student researchers who apply cutting-edge scientific methods to design, develop, refine, and evaluate solutions to complex transportation challenge,; focusing on applications to improve the safety and effectiveness of transportation systems for the broad range of users.
Doerzaph testified to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works on the effects of automated technology on the nation’s roads and bridges, informing policymakers. In a June 2018 testimony, he shared that large-scale deployment of automated vehicles will take decades to achieve with a significant percentage of manually driven vehicles on the roads for the foreseeable future. Doerzaph said that recognizing and designing for these mixed fleets is critical to ensuring safe and effective transportation in the future.
Doerzaph’s research also engages Virginia Tech students. He mentors 13 graduate students on advanced research projects and provides hands-on learning opportunities to undergraduate students through capstone design projects. With Doerzaph’s guidance, a group of grad students voluntarily expanded their semester project by developing a novel vehicle safety system. In 2019, they submitted their concept to the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles Student Competition, taking first prize and earning the title of international champions.
Today, VTTI is a top three transportation institute globally. Institute faculty members currently publish about 150 journal articles per year, including high impact-journals like the New England Journal of Medicine, The Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, JAMA Pediatrics, the International Journal of Epidemiology, and the Journal of Public Health in addition to transportation and safety specific journals.