Best's Recommended Expert Service Providers - Forensic Engineering Experts

James M. Miller, PE, PhD

Dr. Miller is the founder of Miller Engineering and Emeritus Professor at the University of Michigan - Engineering. He has directly served in Washington, originating several Federal OSHA safety regulations, and interacts regularly with Consumer Products Safety Commission regarding safety and product recalls. He serves as a reviewer of ASTM consumer products safety standards, provides upper management guidance on product design, recall and liability issues, and serves as an expert witness when required by consultative involvements.

In addition, Dr. Miller works often on projects relating to compliance with occupational safety and consumer safety standards (OSHA, MSDS, CPSC, ANSI, ASTM, UL, ASABE, etc.) along with accidents associated with agriculture, consumer products, machine guarding, fire/explosions, and slip and fall circumstances. Recently, Dr. Miller has been handling cases involving battery fires, particularly with respect to e-cigarettes and vaporizers.

Dr. Miller holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and a Ph.D. in engineering from Ohio State University. At the University of Michigan, he taught courses in human factors/ergonomics, safety engineering, methods engineering, and law for engineers (1970-1998). On leave from the University at the U.S. Department of Labor (1975-1977), he was appointed as Special Assistant for Safety to OSHA’s Assistant Secretary of Labor, where he had responsibility, among other things, for revising the OSHA Safety Standards (29 CFR 1910 and 1926).

Dr. Miller has authored a chapter titled "Hazard Communication and Right-to-Know: Regulatory Issues" in the Safety Engineering Handbook for the American Society of Safety Engineering. He has also authored five books on the topics of “warnings and safety instructions” and dozens of journal articles. He is currently a committee member of the ASTM Technical Committee F15 on Consumer Products.

Finally, Dr. Miller is a registered professional engineer and consultant with over 35 years of experience, including expert witness work. He specializes in warnings, labeling, instruction manuals, consumer product design, process safety, explosions, fire science, chemical hazards (diacetyl, asbestos, benzene, etc.), machine guarding, vehicle visibility, tractor egress/ingress, slip and fall prevention, recreational vehicles (ATVs, boats, and personal watercraft), and agricultural operations.

Affiliations: American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME), American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE), Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES), American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), American Chemical Society (ACS), American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE), and American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

Mark R. Lehto, PhD

Dr. Lehto is a professor at Purdue University. He completed his Ph.D. in engineering at the University of Michigan, where he specialized in human factors engineering, in particular warnings and labeling, which was also the topic of his dissertation and first book, Warnings: Fundamentals, Design and Evaluation Methodologies, Vol, 1. He teaches courses at Purdue in human and safety factors areas, as well as decision making and artificial intelligence. He has authored numerous professionally-reviewed articles, and he has authored/coauthored internationally-recognized textbooks in the areas of human factors and ergonomics, including his latest textbook entitled Introduction to Human Factors and Ergonomics for Engineers. His current research often involves collecting data in the usability of consumer products and human computer/machine interactions in relation to safety. Dr. Lehto also holds patents in the automotive area in relation to occupant restraint systems. In addition, his early experience in commercial agriculture and fishing qualifies him to analyze recreation- and marine-type accidents.

Special Expertise: Knowledge engineering, warnings and instructions, structuring expert systems, accident modeling, accident statistical analysis, consumer product safety, boating safety, in-field national surveys of product usage and product information effectiveness, automotive occupant restraint systems

Affiliations: American Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE), Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES), Alpha Pi Mu (Industrial Engineering Honor Society)

David R. Clark, PE, PhD

Dr. Clark is an Emeritus Engineering Professor at Kettering University. He was an engineering masters and Ph.D. graduate from the University of Michigan, where he specialized in human factors engineering and system safety analyses. In particular, his earlier degrees in mechanical and electrical areas have given him a special expertise in electrical fire- and explosion-related accidents. Dr. Clark is also published on the topics of warnings and labeling. With considerable in-plant experience at General Motors, he is uniquely qualified to deal with many types of in-plant mechanical and optimization projects. Finally, Dr. Clark has extensive experience working for loss control companies, performing over 150 fire origin and cause investigations in the past few years.

Affiliations: American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE), Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES), National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying, Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) Committee

Adam M. Olshove, PE, MSE

Adam is a registered mechanical professional engineer with over 10 years of experience providing consulting services to industry and the legal profession. Adam holds a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering with a focus on control systems and battery modeling (2019), and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering (2012), both from the University of Michigan.

His projects at Miller Engineering have focused on the analysis of consumer product design and commercial accidents. He has performed dozens of on-site investigations nationwide in relation to these projects, including failure analysis and testing. Adam has also evaluated and designed numerous warning labels, as well as developed instruction manuals for novel products.

Recently, Adam has been involved in the evaluation, design, and testing of batteries including Lithium Ion (Li-ion) and Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH), particularly those used in e-cigarettes, vapes, medical devices, and electric vehicles.

His past professional experience includes product development on the pressure sensor team at Caterpillar, Inc., and implementation of energy saving solutions at Rhetech, Inc., a plastic resin manufacturing company. As an undergraduate, he conducted research at the University of Michigan's Composite Structures Lab under the supervision of the Aerospace Engineering Department Chair, Dr. Tony Waas.

Affiliations: American Society of Mechanical Engineers; National Society of Professional Engineers; American Society for Testing & Materials; American Society of Safety Professionals

Alyssa L. Blunt, EIT, BSME (Mechanical)

Alyssa received a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan in 2019. Her previous work experience includes design engineering at 3M (2018) and product development engineering at MC3 Cardiopulmonary (2016-2018). Alyssa's international experiences include an accelerated entrepreneurship program in Turin, Italy (2017), a STEM outreach camp in Walchandnagar, India (2018), and a 3-D printing research project in Berlin, Germany (2019).

James M. L. Miller, PhD, EIT (Mechanical & Electrical)

James M. L. Miller received the B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Michigan State University in 2014, and the M.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University in 2016. He completed his Ph.D. degree in December 2020 in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in electrical Engineering. He was supported by the National Defense Science and Engineering (NDSEG) Fellowship and the E. K. Potter Stanford Graduate Fellowship. His research interests include nonlinearities, fluctuations, and dissipation tuning mechanisms in MEM resonators for sensors and parametric oscillators. His expertise centers on microelectromechanical systems (MEMS); microscale devices with applications for sensors and agriculture. At Miller Engineering he has applied his mechanical-electrical expertise to biomedical heat transfer problems and energy management in hydroelectric systems, solar arrays and portable battery usage, including battery life cycle testing.