Tolga Kurtoglu
CEO, PARC

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Tolga Kurtoglu is the CEO of PARC, a Xerox company, which 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 the government. Tolga 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. He pioneered the formation of PARC’s digital design and manufacturing (DDM) program. Later, he created and led the system sciences laboratory, building a technology portfolio across hardware, software, and process technologies. In both roles, he managed multimillion-dollar R&D investments and product strategy encompassing several platforms and market offerings and led the successful transition of inventions from an R&D output to commercial software systems and services. Previously, he was a researcher at NASA’s Ames Research Center and a mechanical design engineer at Dell Corporation. Tolga’s research focuses on computation and artificial intelligence applied to the design and manufacturing of complex systems, and the application of preventive and predictive analytics techniques to engineered systems. He’s 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’s 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. Tolga holds a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin, an MS from Carnegie Mellon University, and a bachelor’s degree from Orta Dogu Technical University (ODTU)—all in mechanical engineering.