Anne Marie Petrock was officially appointed as the U.S. Army’s Senior Research Scientist for Warheads Technology during a ceremony at Picatinny Arsenal on April 18. The ceremony took place after a delay of nearly two years due to restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic.
John F. Hedderich III, Director of the Combat Capabilities Development Command Armaments Center, hosted the event.
“There’s not that many people that make it to this level of excellence,” Hedderich said. “Really, at the end of the day, our secret weapon is our people. It’s their genius. It’s their brain, their spirit, their innovation, their dedication.”
Top-ranking federal career employees are referred to as members of the Senior Executive Service. However, Petrock joins a cadre of career senior professional employees occupying professional and scientific positions, otherwise known as “STs,” who play key roles in supporting critical agency missions across the government.
“ST” positions cover non-executive positions above the GS-15 level and involve high-level research and developmental work in the physical, biological, medical, or engineering sciences, or a closely-related field. Many of the federal government’s most renowned scientists and engineers serve in “ST” positions.
Petrock received her Bachelor of Science degree in 1999 in Electrical Engineering from the Newark College of Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), specializing in instrumentation and signal processing. After working in industry as a controls engineer, she obtained a doctorate degree in Biomedical Engineering in 2007 from NJIT, specializing in neural signal processing and time-varying non-linear statistical methods.
Petrock joined the Armaments Center in 2008 as an engineer on the Combined Effects Warheads team. She had roles as bench engineer in detonation physics, technical team lead for additive manufacturing technologies in support of energetic and integrated electronic/explosive devices, Chief of the Detonation Physics and Experimental Research Branch, and Chief of Warheads and Lethal Mechanisms Technology Division.
After the oath of office, Petrock spoke to those gathered to celebrate her achievement. “It really did take a village to get me where I am at,” Petrock said as she thanked family, friends, and colleagues in attendance.
As the Army’s most senior research scientist for Warheads Technology, Petrock offered advice to younger generations.
“It is important in life that you are not afraid to jump in and do what needs doing,” she said. “Despite how dirty, smelly, or unsavory something might be, jumping in is key. We live in a time when artificial intelligence and machine learning stand to revolutionize the way we make predictions and use data. If we just go right to models we are losing a much bigger picture and there will be entire design spaces missed because we lose the physical nature of what we do.
“Get out and design, build, and test. Fail, succeed, and repeat. Learn what we do in real world, not just on a computer screen. And if you can do it side-by-side with an operator who will use it in the field, you have achieved engineering Nirvana.”
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