Dr. Terry Alger

Tackling complex challenges for emerging technologies

Dr. Alger brings three decades of leadership experience in applied research from areas including efficiency improvements for internal combustion engines; energy transition applications such as grid optimization, carbon capture and greenhouse gas reduction; safer energy storage at scale; and mobility systems including connected and autonomous vehicles.

He and his team help innovators seeking bespoke research throughout their product development process, from initial design phases through validation or verification of performance in advance of certification.

He works directly with customers to empower differentiation of products, processes and brands, streamline innovation and reduce iteration, and facilitate more responsive development in an age of unprecedented change.

Approaching R&D from a customer-first perspective

In his former role as executive director of the Sustainable Energy and Mobility Directorate at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, Dr. Alger stewarded an engineering services organization that rose to meet the needs of industry leaders engaged in developing new answers to the challenges of decarbonizing the transportation and energy industries. His work brought him into direct, daily contact with a global array of corporations and governments to drive measurable improvement in products, designs, models and more.

His stewardship of our R&D approach includes integrating the transformative power of highly accurate simulations to help our customers accelerate product development while simultaneously reducing costs and timelines. Additionally, Dr. Alger’s team is focused on how to integrate modeling and simulation into our certification approach, backed by appropriate validation to maintain market confidence.

Driven by public service and curiosity

Dr. Alger graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering and attained the rank of Captain during his military service. Subsequently, he earned a Master of Science in Engineering degree and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Mechanical Engineering, both from the University of Texas at Austin.

He also holds a Master of Business Administration from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Dr. Alger is also a Fellow of the Society of Automotive Engineers and has recently been elected to the Executive Committee of the Transportation Systems Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Dr. Alger also holds dozens of patents for his work in automotive advancement and has been published widely alongside his colleagues in a broad array of industry journals.