Ümit Özgüner received his PhD from University of Illinois and has worked at IBM Research (Yorktown Heights), Istanbul Technical University and The Ohio State University. He has spent sabbaticals at Ohio Aerospace Institute and Ford Motor Company. He is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Ohio State and holds the title of TRC Inc. Chair on ITS. Starting in October 2013, he is the Director of the OSU Crash Imminent Safety University Transportation Center.

Özgüner’s research interests are in large scale systems, decentralized control, intelligent transportation systems and autonomous vehicles. He has over 400 publications and has advised over 25 students on their PhD studies.

Ozguner has been the General or Program Chair of many International Conferences in control and ITS. He was the founding President of the IEEE ITS Council which is now the ITS Society. Teams that he led have participated successfully in various autonomous driving challenges including Demo’97 and all the DARPA Grand and Urban Challenges.

His research has been supported by NSF, AFOSR, DARPA NASA and numerous industries including Ford, Honda Denso.