Mark A. Vernacchia is a GM Technical Fellow and is the Principal System Safety Engineer for all GM propulsion systems worldwide. Mark received a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University and an MS in Engineering Sciences from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). He has been listed on 24 control system based patents as an inventor. Mark is a Professional Engineer in the State of Michigan and is recognized as an Expert Systems Engineering Professional (ESEP) by the International Council of Systems Engineers (INCOSE).

In this episode, Mark talked about SAE J3187, a recommended practice for evaluations of automotive related safety-critical systems using the system-theoretic process analysis STPA. Goal of this document is to provide both educational materials and lessons-learned gained by STPA practitioners. Further, Mark talked about his experiences using STPA and being a task force leader developing the recommened practice.

There will be a major update of SAE J3187 in the first quarter of 2023.

Additional sources of information and links mentioned in the podcast:

  • For info about STAMP and the next STAMP workshop go to: PSAS website
  • A list of presentations by Mark on STPA can be found here: Vernacchia STPA presentations
  • The STPA-handbook can be found here: STPA-handbook
  • You may reach out to Mark A. Vernacchia via email: firstname.a.lastname [a] gm.com (replace firstname and lastname by, ail address is not pasted directly to avoid spam mails)

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Lydia Kaiser has been ECDF Professor for "Digital Engineering 4.0" at the Institute for Machine Tools and Factory Management at the TU Berlin since March 2021. ECDF stands for "Einstein Center Digital Future". She did her doctorate on the topic "Framework for modeling a plausible system structure of mechatronic systems". She then worked on systems engineering and specifically model-based systems engineering at the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechatronics Design IEM in Paderborn. There she was also a group leader and later a department leader.

In this episode she talks about her research and teaching as well as her experiences in practice and in cooperation with companies. Her research revolves around the change in industry that is driven by digitization processes. Above all, she wants to look at questions comprehensively, i.e. from a socio-technical and interdisciplinary perspective.

Further sources of information or links from the podcast:

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Dr. Holger Flühr is with FH Joanneum since 2003 and has been a professor of avionics and air traffic control technology there since 2006. He also acted temporarily as head of the institute and of the degree programs. Before that, after years of working in research at the Karlsruhe Research Center (became the KIT) and Graz University of Technology, he also worked for a company that deals with the development of high-frequency components for mobile phone applications. Finally, the memberships in advisory bodies and interest groups should be mentioned.

In recent weeks, newspapers and online media have increasingly written about the 5G mobile communications standard and possible complications with airplanes. In short, there is a risk that the 5G cellphone waves could influence planes during landing. And while aviation is generally considered to be very safe, takeoff and landing are among the more critical phases of a flight. Now what about the reports? Mr. Flühr answered these and other questions in the podcast. At the beginning, he explained what avionics actually is and which basic idea is used to design aircraft and their systems safely.

Further resources:

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Michael Schmid is a Technology Architect and Loss Prevention Specialist in the field of autonomous systems. His research focuses on preventing losses related to the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and making AI safe for use in everyday technology.

Previously, Michael has worked on automation features in cars, self-driving software, and has developed a certification approach for automated vehicles. Michael has a Master‘s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is currently a PhD candidate in the Group for System Safety and Cybersecurity at MIT. He is the second time guest in this podcast.

In this episode, Michael gave a thorough introduction to STAMP and STPA. STAMP is an accident causality model that was developed by prof. Nancy Leveson at MIT. It is based on systems theory and systems thinking. It is well-suited to addresses the challenges in engineering when working with critical complex systems. STPA is an analysis method based on STAMP to analyze systems to proactively avoid accidents. In comparison, CAST is the a method to analyse accidents that already happened.

Additional sources of information:

  • To learn more about Michael, his projects and current work, or to download his Master‘s thesis on the certification of automated vehicles visit his webpage: michael.systems
  • For info about STAMP and the next STAMP workshop go to: PSAS website
  • The STPA-handbook can be found here: STPA-handbook

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Dr Siddartha Khastgir is the Head of Verification & Validation of collaborative autonomous vehicles (CAV) at WMG, University of Warwick, UK. His research areas in the CAV domain include test scenario generation, safety, simulation-based testing, Safe AI among many others. He has received numerous national and international awards for his research contributions, including the prestigious UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, a seven-year Fellowship focused on safety evaluation of CAVs, and is a Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list maker. He is also the project leader for ASAM standardisation project - OpenODD, and an active participant at ASAM, SAE, ISO and UNECE discussions.

In this episode we talked about verification and validation of autonomous vehicles. This includes the advantages and challenges of simulations and how one research question raises several more questions. We also talked about the low-speed autonomous driving and about the new standard ISO 22737 “Low-Speed Automated Driving (LSAD) systems”. He was the lead author of that standard, as well as of ISO 34503 “Taxonomy for ODD”, where ODD stands for Operational design domain.

Further resources:

  • BSI PAS 1883 - The publicly available standard on how to define an ODD can be found here
  • ISO 22737:2021 - The new standard on low-speed autonomous vehicles can be found here
  • More on openODD can be found here
  • Check out Siddarthas website

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  1. Episode 15 (German) - The Boeing 737 MAX disaster - with Andreas Gerstinger
  2. Episode 16 - Systems approach to Safety - with Michael Schmid
  3. Episode 14 (German) - Neural Networks in Safety-critical Systems - with Mathias Lechner
  4. Episode 13 (German) - Ada and Spark - with Ingo Houben