Thomas A. McDermott, Jr.

As CTO, Dr. McDermott leads SERC’s research strategy and advances focus areas with his decades of technical and management experience at Georgia Tech, Lockheed Martin, and other organizations. He has contributed to SERC reports on systems engineering modernization, digital and agile systems engineering process transformation, transitioning mission-aware concepts to evaluate cost and risk decisions, building a systems assurance framework, and many more. Dr. McDermott has also collaborated on developing a digital engineering simulator for Defense Acquisition University and on a trusted AI systems engineering challenge. For SERC’s Acquisition Innovation Research Center, he led an extensive project on megaproject management. Connect on LinkedIn.

Career Highlights

• Former director of research and interim director, Georgia Tech Research Institute
• Was chief engineer and program manager for Lockheed Martin’s F-22 Raptor Avionics Team
• Fellow, International Council on Systems Engineering, and previous director of strategic integration