There are four PhD and registered Professional Engineers at Miller Engineering who are celebrating 40 years of Professorships at three universities along with providing services to Government, Insurance, and Industry - through research, publications, presentations, and expert testimony. These co-founders and associates are James M. Miller, PE, PhD; Mark R. Lehto, PhD; James M.L. Miller, MS, PhD, EIT; and Adam M. Olshove, PE, MSE. Miller Engineering has a dedicated office with a full-time staff of engineers, researchers, and technical writers. The span of our collective academic and experiential expertise includes the Mechanical, Electrical, Chemical, Agricultural, Industrial, Human Factors, Ergonomic and Safety fields of engineering.
Miller Engineering also designs and operates hydroelectric and solar energy sources within their agricultural, forestry, marine, and cattle subsidiary operations in Idaho and Oregon, lending to unique hand-on expertise in these areas.
Dr. James Miller, PE—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 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. On leave from the University at the U.S. Department of Labor, 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 ASSE. 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, and instruction manuals, consumer product design, process safety, explosions, fire science, chemical hazards (diacetyl, asbestos, benzene, etc.), machine guarding, vehicle visibility, systems for egress/ingress, slip and fall prevention, recreational vehicles (ATVs, boats, and personal watercraft), and all 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).
Dr. Mark Lehto—Co-Founder and 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 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 research and analyze agricultural, recreation, vehicle, and marine 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).
Dr. James M.L. Miller, MS, EIT- Engineering Associate and Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Trine University. Dr. Miller graduated with a Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering and electrical engineering from Stanford University in 2021, advised by Dr. Thomas W. Kenny. Prior to joining the faculty at Trine University, Dr. Miller was a postdoctoral researcher with Dr. Steven W. Shaw at the Florida Institute of Technology and Dr. Gaurav Bahl at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Miller is a recipient of the National Science Foundation Engineering Research Initiation (ERI) grant, the E.K. Potter Stanford Graduate Fellowship, and the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) fellowship. Dr. Miller has authored or coauthored 25 publications in journals and conference proceedings in the area of microelectromechanical systems, resonators, and nonlinear dynamics. Dr. Miller passed the mechanical engineering Professional Engineering (PE) examination in October 2024 and is undergoing Professional Engineering licensure in the state of Michigan. 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.
Adam Olshove, PE, MSE—Managing Engineering. 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
