Dr. Valerie Sitterle has been appointed Deputy Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of the Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC), effective April 2025.
She will work closely with CTO Tom McDermott, who stated, “Val is an excellent addition to the SERC/AIRC leadership team. Her experience in the operational domains of our defense sponsors as well as her background in the system sciences greatly increase our ability to define and lead research in today’s complex defense environment.”
Sitterle has worked with the SERC and AIRC communities for the past decade and as a member of the Research Council since 2018. These experiences illustrated for her what she terms SERC’s “constancy” in aligning research and innovation with stakeholders’ needs. “While the challenges we focus on to best serve the DoD evolve,” Sitterle acknowledged, “I have always admired how SERC stays true to its innovative, collaborative origins. I am honored and delighted to join as the Deputy CTO.”
In this newly developed position, she noted, “A core part of my role will be to help cultivate teams of researchers across the SERC network that can bring an innovative brain trust to bear on increasingly transdisciplinary challenges and ensure our work continues to address our stakeholders’ concerns.” Sitterle also brings to the role her strong background in the analysis of technical and use characteristics of defense systems in operational theater environments.
Previously, Sitterle served as a Principal Research Engineer and Chief Scientist for the Systems Engineering Research Division within the Electronic Systems Laboratory in GTRI at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. She supported the definition and execution of R&D across model-based approaches and digital transformation of SE to provide new capabilities and advance stakeholders’ decision-making processes.
As Deputy CTO, Sitterle will have the opportunity to apply her ability to balance teams, perspectives, and approaches to achieve and optimize innovation. “True innovation is often disruptive,” she noted. “But we can achieve this positively by working within a framework of shared responsibility across our DoD stakeholders and the SERC research community. I’m really looking forward to being part of that relationship and its maturation with the SERC and AIRC team.”
Follow SERC on LinkedIn for regular updates on systems engineering research.
