The Shadow
BLACKSBURG, Va. – Janusz Jeremiasz Filipiak ’05 recently extended his family’s extraordinary legacy of leveraging higher education to foster innovation by giving $2.5 million to advance potentially lifesaving traffic safety research at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute and create a scholarship program in the College of Engineering.
Filipiak, who earned his bachelor’s in computer science and a minor in mathematics, served for more than a decade as CEO of the American subsidiary of Comarch, one of Poland’s leading information technology firms, which his father founded in 1993.
In 2023, under Filipiak’s leadership, the company completed a six-year-long project to build and open the Comarch Group’s main data center in the western hemisphere. He is also owner of procedura.org, which builds human-assisted procedural AI systems, and founder of Scorched Nebraska, a computer gaming firm.
Of his gift, $2.25 million will go to the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI), $1.5 million of which will support traffic safety research through the Move Our World Forward Innovation Fund, and $750,000 of which will provide operational support for programming, alumni outreach, partnership development, and other initiatives related to traffic safety.
The Move Our World Forward Initiative is an area of broad strategic emphasis at VTTI that recognizes the fundamental role transportation plays in our daily lives, communities, and world. Dedicated to ensuring breakthrough transportation research turns into real-world solutions that save lives, the initiative yielded over 10 percent of the total raised during Virginia Tech’s most recent Giving Day.
Through the Move Our World Forward initiative, VTTI mobilizes research and partnerships to address one of transportation’s greatest challenges. While modern mobility connects the world in extraordinary ways, it also results in an unacceptable loss of life each year.
Move Our World Forward empowers VTTI researchers to transform data and new ideas into practical safety innovations. Current efforts are examining ways to reduce distracted driving, prevent crashes involving young drivers and large trucks, and improve safety for pedestrians, bicyclists, and school bus riders; illustrating how VTTI translates research into real-world strategies that save lives.
The remaining $250,000 of Filipiak’s gift will create and endow the Janusz Filipiak Scholars Program within the College of Engineering.
“The importance of education has been driven home to me throughout my life,” said Filipiak, who lives in Wyoming. “I’m grateful for the role Virginia Tech played in preparing me with not only technical expertise, but skills to apply it in the workplace. I hope this gift will help make it possible for other Hokies to have similarly empowering experiences on campus, while also advancing crucial work at VTTI that has the potential to save a great many lives.”
The Janusz Filipiak Scholars Program is named in memory of Filipiak’s father, who passed away in 2023. Across a long, high-impact career, which began in academia, the elder Filipiak not only founded Comarch, but served as chairman of one his nation’s leading soccer teams and was awarded prestigious national honors by his country’s president. Yet he once said his proudest accomplishment was becoming a professor before the age of 40.
He famously drew from his scientific expertise and his university’s pool of talented students to move from serving as a professor and heading the telecommunications unit at AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow, Poland, to founding Comarch.
“The Filipiak family story is a powerful example of how higher education can inspire innovation and global impact,” said VTTI Executive Director Zac Doerzaph. “This generous gift will help accelerate the work we’re doing through the Move Our World Forward initiative to tackle some of transportation safety’s most pressing challenges. It gives our researchers new opportunities to turn cutting-edge ideas into real-world solutions that save lives. At the same time, the Janusz Filipiak Scholars Program will help educate the next generation of engineers who will carry that mission forward. We are deeply grateful that Janusz Jeremiasz Filipiak shares our commitment to advancing transportation safety and empowering future innovators.”
