Profiles

Mr. Morgan joined NCAC in 2003 after spending 20 years with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. There, he worked to show the feasibility of using air bags in frontal collisions. He also helped develop the side-impact dummy and the injury criteria used in the United States' side impact standard. In the early 1990s, he set up a network of leading universities to study the biomechanics of impact trauma. In 1996, Mr. Morgan assumed leadership of the New Car Assessment Program in the United States.

Mr. Morgran holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in physics from North Carolina State University.

Mr. Mader joined NCAC in 1996 and currently serves as manager of NCAC's High-Performance Computing Laboratory. Mr. Mader has extensive knowledge of advanced computing systems and parallel computers and is a certified IRIX system administrator. He maintains NCAC's high-performance computing facilities and interacts extensively with computer hardware, software and crash code developers to benchmark and upgrade system efficiencies.

Mr. Mader earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in computer science from The George Washington University's School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Ms. Samaha is the Director of Advanced Research and adjunct faculty in Transportation Safety at NCAC since 2009. She specializes in advanced vehicle crashworthiness and occupant safety with expertise in crash data analysis. Previously, she spent 17 years at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration where, as a senior research engineer and program manager, she developed and implemented programs in advanced side crash protection, vehicle upper interior protection, vehicle and restraint system modeling, and crash test instrumentation and signal analysis.

Most recently at NHTSA, Ms. Samaha completed the research basis for the new federal side impact safety regulation (FMVSS 214). In her research, she characterized the side crash environment and occupant attributes and injuries, designed and evaluated the oblique pole side impact test to effectively address head trauma, oversaw finite element modeling to support test procedure development, worked with dummy manufacturers to further develop the ES-2 and SIDIIs dummies, and conducted dummy and vehicle fleet evaluation and performance crash tests in support of the new safety regulation.

Ms. Samaha earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Rice University and is currently a doctoral candidate in Transportation Safety Engineering at The George Washington University.

Mr. Nagabhushana joined NCAC in 2005 and focuses on vehicle safety research. His research work is on improving child safety protection, improving roof strength in vehicles, characterizing occupant risks in far-side corner impacts, building finite element models and validating FE models for world-wide use on highway research and analyzing crash data for opportunities in improving safety.

Prior to joining NCAC, Mr. Nagabhushana was consulting as a Safety Performance Engineer at the General Motors Technical Center. He was responsible for providing design strategies, interfacing with design team for optimizing the design for vehicle safety, verifying the design using finite element methods and by physical tests to meet vehicle technical specifications and consumer metrics.

Mr. Nagabhushana earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Bangalore University (India), an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from University of Texas at El Paso, and is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in Transportation Safety Engineering at The George Washington University.

Mr. Brown joined NCAC in 2000, working with the modeling and simulation team to create several vehicle computer models. As manager of NCAC's Vehicle Modeling Laboratory, Mr. Brown organizes and oversees all vehicle modeling tasks, trains new team members and maintains and updates NCAC's vehicle modeling hardware and software. He is expert in a number of computer modeling programs, including AUTOCAD, MSC.Patran, HyperMesh and LS-DYNA.

Mr. Brown received a B.A. in journalism from California State University — Sacramento.

Ms. Nix joined the NCAC in 2008. Ms. Nix previously was a contractor to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration where she provided support for FMVSS 213 and 225 rulemaking. She continues to work on child passenger safety through modeling and simulation at the NCAC.

Ms. Nix earned a B.S. in engineering from the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering in Needham, MA.

Mrs. Seaton joined the NCAC Library in 1995 and maintains all physical and operational aspects of this comprehensive collection. She also works with the library's Avid editing system and media conversion software and has also worked with client-server environments, systems support and fundamental database administration. Mrs. Seaton is a student in GW's School of Business and Public Management.

Ms. Behrs serves as a software and engineering film technician in the NCAC Film Library, handling all material related to FHWA and NHTSA crash test films and reports. Ms. Behrs earned a B.B.A. from The George Washington University School of Business and Public Management.

For the past four years, Chris Story has been performing the daily maintenance and operational functions for the crash laboratory associated with the National Crash Analysis Center. He is an expert in preparing vehicles for full-scale crash testing. Mr. Story has overseen and ensured the correct installation of roadside barriers for crash testing. He has set up pendulum for component impact testing. Chris has machined and welded structures as needed for component and full-scale crash testing. He has installed data acquisition systems and measuring devices on vehicles and barriers for crash testing. He also is responsible for preparing high speed digital camera for crash testing.

For the past Three years, Michael Mosser has been performing the daily maintenance and operational functions for the crash laboratory associated with the National Crash Analysis Center. He is an expert in preparing vehicles for full-scale crash testing. He has set up pendulum for component impact testing. Michael has machined and welded structures as needed for component and full-scale crash testing. He has installed data acquisition systems and measuring devices on vehicles and barriers for crash testing.