Our Team
We are a design group that focuses on addressing transportation safety problems that have gone unsolved for years, or are considered unsolvable altogether. It is our goal to bring about the next generation of highway safety products and significantly reduce the number of transportation-related fatalities.
Dean Sicking, PhD, PE
Managing Partner
Dr. Sicking has been an innovator and visionary in the field of highway safety engineering for over 40 years. He began as a researcher at the Texas A&M University Transportation Institute (TTI) before taking over as director at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Midwest Roadside Safety Facility (MwRSF). Under his leadership, MwRSF became one of the leading research institutes in the world. While there, he received many awards, including the National Medal of Technology from President George W. Bush and the Kenneth Stonex Lifetime Achievement Award. He authored or co-authored NCHRP Report 350, the Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH), and hundreds of technical reports and peer-reviewed journal papers. Along the way, he forever altered the market of highway safety products multiple times with innovations such as the ET-2000, the Sequential Kinking Terminal (SKT-350 and MSKT), and the Midwest Guardrail System (MGS). He also developed the first low-maintenance crash cushion without sacrificial elements (GREAT), the first trailer-mounted attenuator (TTMA), and the first flared energy-absorbing terminal (FLEAT). More recently, through his company, Sicking Safety Systems, he has developed the world’s first and only energy-absorbing, tangent, W-beam guardrail system that prevents gating crashes. This device, known as the Next Generation Terminal (NGT), is the world's first non-gating terminal and can eliminate spearing during guardrail end crashes. The NGT has been successfully tested to MASH Test Level 3 and was able to safely stop all test vehicles, up to 15 degrees, within 60 ft of the terminal head. Further, the system has been successfully tested at speeds up to 78 mph and 5 degrees.
Kevin Schrum, PhD, PE
Program Director, Senior Engineer
With over 15 years of experience in the highway safety engineering field, Dr. Schrum has conducted research on topics ranging from crash data collection and analysis to mechanical design of hardware safety features. His work primarily centers on energy management, and as a result, his projects have included recreational safety as well, such as football and equestrian helmet design and testing. He is a recognized expert in the field of guardrail and guardrail terminal design and testing. He has a Bachelor's of Science and a Master of Science in Civil Engineering and a Doctorate in Engineering, all from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he was an undergraduate and graduate research assistant at the Midwest Roadside Safety Facility (MwRSF). He also works as a research scientist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) where he serves as the Principal Investigator on research projects including material characterization studies, crash testing programs, and new-product developmental research.
Steven Thompson
Project Manager
Mr. Thompson first met Dr. Sicking about 15 years ago when Dr. Sicking walked in as a customer at Mr. Thompson’s Design and Fabrication Business in Lincoln, Nebraska. In the first few years, Steve worked as a private contractor with Dean fabricating prototype highway safety components for testing at the Midwest Roadside Safety Facility (MwRSF) in Lincoln, Nebraska. A little over a decade ago, Steve moved that shop from Nebraska to Alabama joining Dean and the Sicking Team at UAB to help develop safety products. Steve has a wide range of experience in custom and prototype Design and Fabrication that includes highway safety research, live theater scenery and special effects production, as well as building scenery and special effects for various national touring bands. Steve has over 30 years of experience in the field of prototype design and development and overall project management. Steve also enjoys working with the UAB Engineering Students each year with their Senior Design Projects, helping them develop their ideas.
Joe Schwertz
Design Engineer
Mr. Schwertz graduated from LSU with a Bachelor’s degree in biological engineering. He attended graduate school at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and received his Master’s degree in biomedical engineering. Mr. Schwertz began his career investigating the strength of orthopedic implants, but later joined this research group in 2014 and has been instrumental in test design and documentation. He has extensive experience with SolidWorks and provides most of the fabrication, layout, and design drawings for each project. He also coordinates and analyzes the video footage for each test.
Chantel Jordi
Design Engineer
Ms. Chantel Jordi obtained both her Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). She started working in the fabrication shop at UAB as a graduate student employee in 2018 and transitioned to a full-time employee during the spring of 2021. Some of the more recent projects that she has assisted with include fabricating components for testing new safety devices, assisting with the senior design projects as needed, and periodically work on fabricating parts for the animal research side of campus most of which are carts or accessories for rat cages. In addition, she collaborates with the rest of the team on designing the new safety devices. Furthermore, she works on collecting crash data from the FARS Encyclopedia to create a database for collecting statistical data on fatal crashes to aid in determining common trends for the different classifications of fatal crashes. For future work, she will continue collaborating with the team, and developing the fatal crash database and the statistical analysis of the data.
Dakotah Sicking
Design Engineer
Mr. Sicking graduated from Texas A&M University, where he received his Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. He is currently enrolled as a PhD student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). Mr. Sicking specializes in data acquisition for each test, where he is responsible for installing accelerometers and the data acquisition system, running diagnostics on it, and arming it for each test. He is also active in sports and recreational safety. Notably, he has contributed to the design of a new hockey wall and has led an effort to test it using crash test dummies and a unique, state-of-the-art sled and track system to launch the dummy into the hockey wall. He has also assisted with designing and conducting tests on equestrian helmets using the same sled and track.