Tolga Kurtoglu

Dr. Tolga Kurtoglu is CEO of PARC, a Xerox company, which is in "the business of breakthroughs.” Practicing open innovation since being incorporated in 2002, PARC provides custom R&D services, technology, specialized expertise, best practices, and intellectual property to Xerox’s business groups, Fortune 500 and Global 1000 companies, startups, and government.

Kurtoglu oversees PARC’s R&D investments for Xerox and its innovation portfolio for commercial clients and government agencies in a diverse set of focus areas and competencies including human-centered innovation services, intelligent agents and systems, clean energy, smart packaging, machine learning and analytics, security and privacy, printed electronics and digital manufacturing.

Motivated by his passion for bringing innovations to market, Dr. Kurtoglu specializes in leading cross-functional teams to apply science and technology to develop creative solutions to real-world problems. Since joining PARC in 2010, he has held various leadership roles focusing on R&D management, product strategy, and technology commercialization. In his early years at PARC, he pioneered the formation of PARC’s digital design and manufacturing (DDM) program. Later he created and led the System Sciences Laboratory by building a technology portfolio across hardware, software, and process technologies. In both roles, he managed multi-million-dollar R&D investments and product strategy encompassing several platforms and market offerings and led successful transition of inventions from an R&D output to commercial software systems and services. Prior to PARC, he was a researcher at NASA Ames Research Center and a mechanical design engineer at Dell Corporation.

Dr. Kurtoglu’s own research was focused on computation and artificial intelligence applied to design and manufacturing of complex systems, and application of preventive and predictive analytics techniques to engineered systems. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin and M.S. from Carnegie Mellon University, both in Mechanical Engineering. He holds a bachelor’s degree in the same field from Orta Dogu Technical University (ODTU).

He has published over 80 peer-reviewed articles and papers in leading journals and conferences in his field and regularly serves in organizational leadership roles for the ASME, AIAA, AAAI, Design Society, and Prognostics and Health Management Society. He is the recipient of the IEEE Best Professional Paper Award at the Prognostics and Health Management Conference, IEEE Best Application Paper Award from IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, NASA Ames Technical Excellence Award, PARC Excellence Award, PARC Golden Acorn Award, and the Best Design Award in “Dexterous Robot Hand” Design Competition.