Valerie Sitterle is a Senior Research Engineer with the Information Technology & Telecommunications Laboratory at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI).  She earned her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, with minors in both Bioengineering and Management, from Georgia Tech.  She has an M.S. degree in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics from the University of Florida, and received her M.S. and B.M.E. in Mechanical Engineering from Auburn University.  After working for NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center through undergraduate and part of graduate school, she joined GTRI in 1997.

In her present role with GTRI’s Commercial Products Realization Office, she functions as a key liaison between GTRI and industry sponsors and collaborators, advising on strategic technical direction for product development based on research and development pathways and current market needs, and leading many of these efforts as Program Director. Her primary foci have been inter-disciplinary efforts across fundamental engineering and scientific disciplines in the biomedical and defense domains in addition to information technology (IT) applied to health and its intersection with biomedicine.

Her current research includes biophotonics, specifically with respect to diagnostics and biological interactions, nanoparticle-based diagnostic systems, and high-performance spectral analysis for defense applications.  Combining her broad scientific background with IT, she also investigates cross-platform architectures specifically designed to meet unique needs of health groups serving vulnerable or underserved populations and has recently begun to apply social media approaches to design of health interventions.  This latter effort is in collaboration with researchers in Georgia Tech’s GVU Center and is beginning to lead into adaptive modeling strategies for complex systems.

She currently serves on the Health Society Board for the Technology Association of Georgia, helping to facilitate education and economic development discussions with corporate, government, education, and entrepreneurial leaders across the state.  Prior to her position with TAG, she was formerly on the Board of Advisors for the Georgia Health Information Exchange.  In addition, she has lectured in numerous undergraduate courses and served as Fellow advisor or on thesis committees for graduate students at Georgia Tech.