Daniel Watzenig was born in Austria. He holds a doctorate in electrical engineering and was awarded the venia docendi (adjunct professorship) for electrical measurement science and signal processing from Graz University of Technology, Austria.
He is CTO and Head of the Electronics Systems and Software Department at Virtual Vehicle Research Graz. In addition, he was appointed as a Full Professor of Multi-Sensor Perception of Autonomous Systems at the Institute of Computer Graphics and Vision, Faculty of Computer Science and Biomedical Engineering, Graz University of Technology, Austria.
His research interests focus on sense & control of autonomous vehicles, sensor fusion, reinforcement learning and decision making under uncertainty. He is the author or co-author of over 200 peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, patents, and articles. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the SAE Int. Journal on Connected and Automated Vehicles (SAE JCAV). Since 2019 he is invited guest lecturer at Stanford University, USA, teaching multi-sensor perception for autonomous systems (Principles of Robot Autonomy). He is the founder of the Autonomous Racing Graz Team. Since 2024 he is Vice Chair and Member of the Executive Committee of the IEEE Austria Section. He is IEEE Distinguished Lecturer in the field of autonomous vehicles, Board Member of the INSIDE Industry Association (European Initiative on Intelligent Digital Systems) and Member of the Academic Advisory Council of PAVE (global Partners for Automated Vehicle Education). He has been a consultant and appointed expert for military robotics for the Armaments and Defense Technology Agency of the Austrian Armed Forces since 2019.
