Dariu M. Gavrila received the PhD degree in computer science from the University of Maryland at College Park, USA, in 1996. From 1997 till 2016 he has been with Daimler R&D in Ulm, Germany, where he eventually became a Distinguished Scientist. In 2010, he was appointed professor at the University of Amsterdam, chairing the area of Intelligent Perception Systems (part-time). Since 2016 he heads the Intelligent Vehicles and Cognitive Robotics section at the TU Delft as a Full Professor.
Over the past 15 years, Prof. Gavrila has focused on visual systems for detecting humans and their activity, with application to intelligent vehicles, smart surveillance and social robotics. He led the multi-year pedestrian detection research effort at Daimler, which was incorporated in the Mercedes-Benz S-, E-, and C-Class models (2013-2014). He is frequently cited in the scientific literature and received the I/O 2007 Award from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Application Award 2014. His personal Web site is www.gavrila.net.