Dr. Charles Funk is a Professional Engineer and consultant with expertise in accident reconstruction, mechanical engineering, and fire cause and origin investigation. He holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Drexel University and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan. Dr. Funk is a licensed engineer in multiple states.
Dr. Funk has investigated approximately 2,000 motor vehicle collisions, which have involved motorized wheelchairs, pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles, passenger vehicles, off-road vehicles, and commercial vehicles. He is a trained Bosch Crash Data Retrieval (CDR) technician and has conducted numerous downloads from vehicles involved in frontal, side, rear, and rollover events. He also has experience performing downloads from commercial vehicle event data recorders. Dr. Funk also has experience and training in traffic signal timing interpretations. He has published research on motorcycle simulation comparison, acceleration and braking performances of school buses, accuracy of GoPro telemetry data, bumper mismatch collisions, stiffness coefficients, and pedestrian detection. He has also performed research on narrow object impacts and vehicle backing performance. Dr. Funk is a qualified Aerial Work Platform Operator.
Dr. Funk’s thermal sciences experience includes conducting fire cause and origin investigations as well as analyses of combustion, fluid flow, and thermodynamics. He is a Certified Fire and Explosions Investigator and a Certified Vehicle Fire Investigator through the National Association of Fire Investigators. Dr. Funk has investigated numerous gas and electric appliances to determine whether or not they contributed to causing a fire. Additionally, Dr. Funk has extensive experience in determining the failure mechanism of various mechanical systems.
