Sitti received his BSc and MSc degrees in electrical and electronics engineering from
Boğaziçi University in
Istanbul in 1992 and 1994, respectively, and his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the
University of Tokyo in 1999. He was a research scientist at
UC Berkeley from 1999 to 2002 and a Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Institute at
Carnegie Mellon University from 2002 to 2014. He became a Director at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart in 2014. On November 9, 2020, exactly 31 years after the
fall of the Berlin Wall, Sitti was presented with the «Breakthrough of the Year» Award 2020 in the Engineering and Technology category by the Falling Walls World Science Summit. In March 2019, he received an Advanced Grant from the
European Research Council (ERC), which is awarded only to established researchers with a proven track record of excellence. In terms of the originality and significance of research contributions, grant recipients are exceptional leaders in their given fields. What is more, Sitti and his team recently received the Best Paper Award at the Robotics Science and Systems Conference for their invention of a baby jellyfish-inspired soft millirobot with medical functions. Sitti also received the Rahmi Koç Medal of Science (2018), Best Paper Award in the Robotics Science and Systems Conference (2019),
IEEE/ASME Best Mechatronics Paper Award (2014), SPIE Nanoengineering Pioneer Award (2011), Best Paper Award in the IEEE/RSJ Intelligent Robots and Systems Conference (1998, 2009), and
NSF CAREER Award (2005). He is the editor-in-chief of both
Progress in Biomedical Engineering and
Journal of Micro-Bio Robotics, and an associate editor for both
Science Advances and
Extreme Mechanics Letters. Sitti has published two books and over 460 peer-reviewed papers, over 300 of which have appeared in archival journals. His group's research breakthroughs have been featured in the popular press, such as
New York Times,
Wall Street Journal,
Le Monde,
The Economist,
Der Spiegel,
Forbes,
Süddeutsche Zeitung,
Science,
New Scientist Science News,
Nature News,
MIT Technology Review,
IEEE Spectrum Magazine and
Stuttgarter Zeitung. He has given over 200 invited keynote, plenary or distinguished seminars in universities, conferences and industry. He has over 12 issued patents and over 15 pending patents. == Research ==