Dr. Wassim George Najm
Intelligent Vehicles and Crash Avoidance

Wassim Najm received a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Northeastern University in 1990. He serves as a Principal Technical Advisor in intelligent vehicles and crash avoidance at the Volpe Center.

Dr. Najm has worked primarily in the area of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS)/Intelligent Vehicle Initiative (IVI) and crash avoidance of motor vehicles. He has developed plans, managed teams, and technically led these teams to execute numerous projects in technology assessment, crash problem analysis and development of ITS countermeasure concepts, interactive pre-crash analysis modeling software, estimation of safety benefits, and evaluation of crash avoidance systems. He has devised for the U.S. DOT guidelines for the independent evaluation of advanced crash avoidance technologies in field operational tests; played a key role in the development of the IVI business plan; served on a national expert panel, developed, and applied novel engineering-based methodologies to predict the safety benefits of future advanced automotive crash avoidance systems; and introduced new techniques to analyze crash data from national databases to better understand pre-crash scenarios and crash contributing factors. Dr. Najm has also served as the U.S. DOT program co-manager in a cooperative agreement with a private consortium under the Technology Reinvestment Project, which successfully accelerated the commercialization of uncooled infrared sensors by creating viable multi-use products such as automotive night vision systems and handheld cameras for search and rescue, and security applications.