Ercan M. Dede is the Director of the Electronics Research Department at the Toyota Research Institute of North America in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). He received his B.S. degree and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan and a M.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University. Currently, he is the principal investigator for an industry group that conducts research on advanced vehicle electronics and photonics systems including sensors, power semiconductors, human-machine interfaces, advanced circuits and control, electronics packaging, and thermal management technology.

Before joining Toyota, Dr. Dede worked at the University of Michigan, Space Physics Research Laboratory. There he was part of a team that led the design of a filter changer mechanism for the Dark Energy Camera that was installed on the Blanco 4m telescope. In between his undergraduate and doctoral work, he worked as a spacecraft component design engineer in the Solar Array & Mechanisms Product Center at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company in Sunnyvale, California, while also completing his M.S. in design at Stanford University as part of the Lockheed Martin Honors Co-op program.

Dr. Dede’s research interests span a range of topics including multiphysics simulation, design optimization of thermal-fluid systems, metamaterials, thermal composites, electronics/photonics thermal management and packaging, and advanced manufacturing.