Dr. Walker is a Senior Research Associate for the Center for Truck and Bus Safety (CTBS) at VTTI. As the Chief of Research (Retired) for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), Dr. Walker developed the FMCSA research program by identifying new initiatives to meet the agency’s near- and long-term requirements, such as fatigue, naturalistic driving, and onboard monitoring programs. Dr. Walker has overseen the contract awards of more than $80 million for commercial vehicle research. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Management, a Master’s in Business Administration (with a focus on Operations Research), and a Doctorate in Decision Science and Information Systems. With more than 35 years of experience as an Operations Research Analyst, Dr. Walker has conducted more than 30 studies for the U.S. Army in the areas of manpower, personnel, training, and safety and was responsible for designing more than 100 safety studies for the DOT.
Dr. Walker has spent 35 years working on operations research studies of the federal government. Operations research is a discipline that deals with the application of advanced analytical methods to better understand a problem and to help make better decisions. As such, he has worked on studies focused on personnel recruitment and attrition, program evaluation and logistics, and training impact analyses. He has extensive experience conducting structured interviews and focus group meetings, developing survey instruments, analyzing findings, and developing final reports and recommendations. He has conducted surveys of high school seniors and their knowledge of Army enlistment options, enlistees who left the Army’s delayed entry program, new enlistees in the Army, and surveys of soldiers leaving the Army from basic training and after working in Army units. He also has extensive experience conducting program evaluations that included surveys of soldiers to better understand their perceptions of program benefits. He has designed surveys of soldiers to conduct a task and workload analysis of numerous military occupational specialties.