Yıldıray Yıldız

Biography

Yıldıray Yıldız is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Bilkent University. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, with a minor in Mathematics, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2009.

Before joining Bilkent University in 2014, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at UC Santa Cruz for one year and at NASA Ames Research Center for four years.

Prof. Yıldız received ASME’s Best Student Paper Award for his work titled “Automotive Powertrain Control Problems Involving Time Delays: An Adaptive Control Approach,” as well as the NASA Group Achievement Award for the outstanding technological development of the CAPIO system in the Vertical Motion Simulator.

He contributed to NASA’s Green Aviation Initiative. He has served on program committees for various conferences and as a reviewer for numerous journals. From 2010 to 2013, he served as a member of the AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Technical Committee.

Since 2015, he has served as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Conference Editorial Board, and since 2016, he has served as an Associate Editor for IEEE Control Systems Letters.

Prospective Students: If you are interested, please send a brief email describing your research interests along with your CV. Undergraduate students are also welcome. If you are a skilled programmer, please indicate this in your email.

Open Postdoctoral Positions: Candidates with an interest in reinforcement learning and game theory, as well as strong programming skills, are sought. In particular, candidates who can apply computer technology to predicting the behavior of complex dynamic systems and solving related problems are of interest.

Education

• Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, Minor: Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2009)
• M.S., Mechatronics, Sabancı University (2004)
• B.S., Mechanical Engineering, Middle East Technical University (2002)