SMART people

What inspires me about SMART:

Working across traditional research disciplines to solve complex transportation problems through integration of engineering technologies with social sciences.

Biography:

Irv Salmeen retired in January 2007 as the manager of a department in the Ford Motor Company Research Laboratory. Part of the department worked on problems of in-vehicle connection to the internet and wireless infrastructure. The other part worked on mathematical modeling and data-intensive computing applied to enterprise-level business and technology decisions. We also worked on applications of experimental and behavioral economics to decisions regarding CO2 trading markets and fuel-economy issues. From 1994 to 1999 I was the Chemistry Department manager. The department’s main research areas were: advanced materials, air pollution chemistry and physics, vehicle emissions-measurement technologies, global-climate-change modeling, public health implications of air pollutants, and biological mitigation of industrial waste. Prior to 1994, Salmeen was a Ford Research Laboratory staff scientist and studied health effects of vehicle emissions, microbiological treatment of industrial wastes, and basic science of biological energy metabolism. Over the years, he was a Ford technical representative to federal and state advisory committees and also served on various university advisory committees and advisory boards of professional organizations. His undergraduate degrees are in engineering physics and mathematics, and his Ph.D is in biophysics, all from the University of Michigan. He was a postdoctoral fellow at UC-Berkelely (‘69-‘70). Currently he collaborates with the University of Michigan Center for the Study of Complex Systems to build models to help understand future markets for plug-in hybrid electric vehicle technologies and he works with the SMART team to explore mathematical model-based approaches to sustainable mobility problems.

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