Biography

Ömer Şahin Taş completed his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering with High Honors at Istanbul Technical University (ITU) in 2011, along with an extracurricular minor in electrical engineering. During his undergraduate studies, he built Turkey's first Formula SAE race car and took part in the FSAE Michigan 2010 race. In 2011, he took part in the design of Turkey's first intervehicular communication-based autonomous car and participated in the Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge held in the Netherlands.

After his undergraduate studies at ITU, he was awarded with a TEV/DAAD scholarship for master's studies in Germany. He completed his master's degree with a specialization in mechatronics and information technologies at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). He wrote his master's thesis on motion planning for autonomous vehicles at the FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik and completed his education with a "very good" ("sehr gut") degree in 2014.

Subsequently, he began his doctoral studies at KIT while working as a research scientist at FZI. In 2022, he completed his Ph.D. with "summa cum laude" under the joint supervision of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Christoph Stiller (KIT) and Prof. Dr. Mykel Kochenderfer (Stanford University). His dissertation won the UniDAS Science Award and was an IEEE ITS Society Best Dissertation Award finalist. After his Ph.D., he held a visiting researcher position, hosted by Prof. Dr. Igor Gilitschenski at the University of Toronto.

Since 2017, he has been the manager of the Mobile Perception Systems department at FZI and a research group leader at KIT. He also coordinates the research of approximately 10 doctoral students and facilitates the transfer of these research results to industry through technology transfer projects. For more information, you can visit his profiles on KIT and FZI webpages.

Education

  • Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 2022
    • Ph.D. (Dr.-Ing.)
    • Completed with 'mit Auszeichnung' (summa cum laude)
  • Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 2014
    • M.Sc. in mechanical engineering
    • Completed with 'sehr gut' (very good)
    • DAAD Scholarship during master's
  • Istanbul Technical University, 2011
    • B.Sc. in mechanical engineering (High Honors)
    • Minor in electrical engineering (Honors)

Awards

  • 2023 - UniDAS Science Award (“Wissenschaftspreis”)
  • 2023 - ITS Society Best Dissertation Award Finalist
  • 2022 - 2nd place “Best Paper Award” at IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference
  • 2016 - 2nd place as a team in the Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge 2011