Biography

Ömer Şahin Taş completed his bachelors at Istanbul Technical University (ITU) mechanical engineering department with High Honors and obtained an extracurricular mechatronics minor degree both in 2011. 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 longitudinal 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 Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT) mechanical engineering department. He wrote his master's thesis on motion planning in autonomous vehicles at the FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik research institute. After completing his education with a "Sehr gut" degree in 2014, he started to work as a scientific researcher at the same institute and concurrently started with his doctoral studies at KIT. Since 2017, he has been head of the Mobile Perception Systems department at FZI. He has also undertaken the task of coordinating the research of approximately 10 doctoral students and transferring these research results to the industry through technology transfer projects. His research interests mainly include motion planning and decision making under uncertainty for automated vehicles.

In 2022 he completed his Ph.D. under supervision of Prof. Dr.-Ing Christoph Stiller (KIT) and Prof. Dr. Mykel Kochenderfer (Stanford University) with summa cum laude. Shortly after, he was invited to the University of Toronto as a visiting researcher to Toronto Intelligent Systems Lab led by Prof. Dr. Igor Gilitschenski, where he conducted research on deep reinforcement learning.

For further information you may also check his profile at the institution pages of the KIT and the FZI.

Community Service

Associate Editor for

  • IEEE Intelligent Vehicle Symposium (IV)

Reviewer for

  • Asian Conference for Machine Learning (ACML)
  • IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference (ITSC)
  • IEEE Intelligent Vehicle Symposium (IV)
  • IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)
  • Journal of Aerospace Information Systems
  • IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles
  • IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles
  • IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Magazine
  • ...

Memberships

  • IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society
  • IEEE Robotics and Automation Society

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 Eng.
    • Completed with 'Sehr gut' (very good)
    • DAAD Scholarship during master's
  • Istanbul Technical University, 2011
    • B.Sc. in Mechanical Eng., Mechatronics
    • High 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 201