Joachim Taiber
Born and raised in Germany, Dr. Taiber enjoyed his academic training at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ), Switzerland, where he first graduated with a master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1991 and then completed his PhD degree in Technical Sciences in 1996.
After his studies Dr. Taiber started his professional career at a Swiss software start-up company in Zurich. He joined BMW Group in Munich, Germany, in 1997 as in-house consultant in the vehicle development division where he worked on different aspects of functional integration and validation of vehicle systems, vehicle electronics platforms, and vehicle program management on programs such as BMW 7 series, BMW X5 and BMW X3.
He assisted the CEO as technology advisor – which led to the creation of BMW i-Ventures which is today a $500 million Silicon Valley based corporate venture fund and supported the CIO in a major reorganization of the IT division which resulted in holding different leadership positions in the areas of IT strategy, program management, innovation management and benchmarking and the overall alignment between the Vehicle IT and Enterprise IT strategy.
In 2003, Dr. Taiber was engaged in the initial planning of a $250 million automotive research campus in Greenville, South Carolina, closely located to the BMW US
manufacturing site that was implemented as public private partnership model following Harvard Professor Michael Porter’s recommendation to create an Automotive Cluster in South Carolina and strengthening the strategic collaboration between BMW and Clemson University leading to the creation of more than 1,000 jobs within a 10 year timeframe. The first facility created on the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research (CU-ICAR) campus in 2005 was the BMW Information Technology Research Center (ITRC) – a dedicated building designed to collaborate with BMW IT partners on open innovation and strategic advanced technology projects including the aspects of the “networked vehicle” and the “next generation data center”. Dr. Taiber led innovation activities at ITRC as director of the Information Technology Research Office for multiple years and worked closely with the BMW Tech Office in Silicon Valley, large tech companies, start-ups and universities as well as FIA Formula 1. In particular he was instrumental in the implementation of innovation partnerships with Intel, Apple, Microsoft and SAP.
In 2010, Dr. Taiber joined Clemson University as full time research professor and member of the Automotive Engineering, the Electrical & Computer Engineering and the Computer Science faculty and he was awarded a Greencard acknowledging that his professional contribution is of national relevance. In 2012 he created the Advanced VehicleInfrastructure Technology Institute under the College of Engineering & Science which he directed until the end of 2015. During academic engagement, Dr. Taiber worked intensively on the development of vehicle electrification and charging infrastructure, connected vehicle systems and intelligent transportation infrastructure and implemented important partnerships with US Department of Energy (Oakridge National Lab, Savannah River National Lab), US Department of Transportation as well as with Toyota and Cisco. Dr. Taiber was instrumental in the pioneering of in-motion contactless wireless charging of electrified vehicles and related V2X infrastructure development.
In January 2016, Dr. Taiber was appointed Chief Technology Officer of the International Transportation Innovation Center (ITIC), a special purpose non-profit organization headquartered in Greenville, South Carolina, focused on developing and applying innovative methods of system validation for connected, automated, shared and sustainable forms of mobility with industrial and academic partners which includes aspects of safety and security related risk assessments. His intensive work with Clemson University and USDOE in creating a vehicle-in-the-loop testbed for the development of anticipative and predictiveautonomous vehicle-control algorithms for mixed traffic situations has been explicitly acknowledged in the latest January 2020 report of the National Science & Technology Council and the Department of Transportation about “Ensuring American Leadership in Automated Vehicle Technologies”.He also initiated a global consortium effort for the design and operation of smart mobility testbeds led by SAE (Society of Automotive Engineering) International – the InternationalAlliance for Mobility Testing and Standardization (IAMTS) which was officially announced in 2019 during the SAE World Congress.