People

Diomidis Katzourakis is an Assistant Professor at the School of Production Engineering and Management of the Technical University of Crete (2023). He is the head of Industrial Automation and Autonomous (I²A) Systems at the School of Production Engineering and Managment at the Technical University of Crete. 

He received his PhD in Vehicle Dynamics and Control in 2012, M.Sc. in Automotive Embedded Systems in 2008 and the Diploma in Electronic Engineering in 2006. Between 2019 and 2023 he was the Systems Engineering Manager on Motion Control and Vehicle Dynamics at Waymo (formerly Google Car Project) at Mountain View, California, USA. He was the technical lead and manager of the motion control and vehicle dynamics Systems Engineering team for both Waymo autonomous ride hailing and trucking businesses. The responsibilities as technical lead-manager include setting up and tracking short term targets and long term goals and establishing the overall vision of the team and its axes of development in terms of technology, skills and team members’ personal growth. Between 2015 and 2019, he worked in Control System Engineering, Special Projects Group, Autonomous technologies at Apple Inc. Cupertino, California, USA. He designed and led the development of various dynamical control systems. Between 2012 and 2015 he worked as CAE Active Safety Assignment Leader where he was responsible for development and release of chassis control systems (steering, braking, driveline) using CAE methods, facilitating the production of mathematically optimized cars directly from design to tool-trial vehicle prototypes. He also worked as CAE Vehicle Dynamics Engineer primarily working with EPAS (electrically power assisted steering) and its related functionalities (lane-keeping-aid etc.). Between 2003 - 2012 he had varied research and teaching experience around vehicle dynamics, applied control and control theory and mechatronic system design between Greece, the Netherlands and UK. He is a technical expert in vehicle dynamics, chassis control systems (brakes, steering and propulsion) and motion control in manual and semi-autonomous/autonomous cars. It has more than16 published patents as well as more than 20 publications in scientific conferences and journals.

Education:

2008-2012, Ph.D. "Driver Steering Support Interface Near the Vehicle’s Handling Limits” στο Intelligent Automotive Systems (IAS) και Biomechanical Engineering (BME), Mechanical, Maritimes and Materials Engineering (3mE), Technical University of Delft (TUDelft).

2006-2008 M.Sc. in Electronics: “Scaled Test Bed for Automotive Experiments: Evaluation of Electronic Stability Control Schemes” at the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Technical University of Crete (TUC), at the Microprocessors & Hardware Laboratory.

2001-2006, Diploma in Electronic Engineering (B.Sc.-M.Sc., 5-year program) “Autonomous Vehicle Guidance” at the Department of Computer and Informatics Engineering (CEID), at the University of Patras.

Research interests: His research interests focus on innovative autonomous vehicles/systems from system architecture/design, to dynamic analysis and control, to development, to verification and validation. He is currently focused on Research and Development of Semi-Autonomous/Autonomous Systems focused on Vehicular, Biomechanical and Marine applications. 

Contact

• phone: 2821037247
• e-mail: dkatzourakis <at>tuc.gr
• Postal address: School of Production and Management Engineering, Technical University of Crete, Polytechnic University, 73100, Chania
• office: Δ4.009
• hours of cooperation: Tuesday - Thursday 8:00 - 11:00