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 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 1995. He joined BMW Group 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 as well as vehicle program management. He assisted the CEO as technology advisor 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, IT program management, IT innovation management and IT benchmarking. In 2003 Dr. Taiber was engaged in the initial planning team to implement the masterplan of a 250 acre automotive research campus in South Carolina closely located to the BMW US manufacturing site as a public private partnership model and to help shape the strategic collaboration with Clemson University. 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 80’000 sqft building specifically 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 was leading the innovation activities at ITRC as director of the Information Technology Research Office for multiple years and collaborated during this time closely with the BMW Tech Office in Silicon Valley. In 2010 Dr. Taiber joined Clemson University as research professor and member of the Automotive Engineering faculty and created in 2012 the Advanced Vehicle-Infrastructure Technology Institute which he headed as director until the end of 2015. In January 2016 Dr. Taiber was appointed CTO of the International Transportation Innovation Center (ITIC) where is leading the effort to develop, implement and operate open and closed testbeds with a focus on connected, automated and zero-emission mobility in smart urban environments both on a national and international scale. He continues to serve Clemson University as adjunct professor at CU-ICAR.