Manuel Birke

Manuel Birke currently serves as the Director of AV Core Software at Cruise, focusing on the transformative potential of self-driving cars for urban transportation. Prior to this role, Birke was the Senior Director of Perception and Mapping at Luminar Technologies, leading efforts in developing software for high-performance lidar sensors. With extensive experience at Mercedes-Benz AG, Birke held positions including Director of Environment Model and HD Maps, where responsibilities included developing software for urban autonomous driving, and Senior Manager of Connected Car and Big Data, focusing on analytics and product improvement. Earlier career highlights include serving as a Computational Scientist for Parallel Computing at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Principal Software Engineer for Distributed Systems at T-Systems International. Birke holds both a Master’s and Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Technische Universität Braunschweig.