Prof. Kemal Yüksek was born in Çaykara, Trabzon in 1969. He completed his bachelor's degree in Mathematical Engineering in 1990 and his Master of Engineering degree in Computer Engineering in 1993 at Istanbul Technical University (ITU).  He focused on Applied Mathematics during his Ph.D. studies and earned his Ph.D. degree in the same field in 1998 from Yıldız Technical University (YTÜ).

Prof. Yüksek started his academic career as a “Research Assistant” at Yıldız Technical University in 1993. In 2000, he started to work as an “Assistant Professor” in Computer Engineering Department at Istanbul Kültür University. In addition to his academic career, he occupied as the deputy head of the Computer Engineering department. He received the title of “Associate Professor” in 2012 and the title of “Professor” from Hasan Kalyoncu University in 2016.  He gave lectures, attended conferences on software, database design, mathematical modeling, artificial intelligence, computer graphics, training management, and civil aviation management.  Besides all, he has numerous articles published in scientific journals.  

In 2012, Prof. Yüksek started his professional career at Turkish Airlines as a “Project Manager”. Between 2013-2018, he occupied as “Vice President of Training” at Turkish Aviation Academy. 

He took part in the development and implementation of projects such as Turkish Airlines' New Passenger Service System (ticketing and reservation), Training Management System, Online Assessment System, and Learning and Training Portal. Apart from this, he accomplished the software development of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Street Lightening System and Medical Services System projects. Prof. Yüksek has managed the Virtual Reality and Simulation Learning Applications compatible with Scorm X-API Standards, by 3-D Interactive e-Learning Platform with the support of the TÜBİTAK R&D Project. He successfully represented Turkey in the civil aviation area by participating as a speaker in conferences organized by international civil aviation organizations. Prof. Yüksek started serving as the “Deputy Director General of Turkish DGCA” in May 2019 and has been nominated as ‘Acting Director General” in January 2021. Prof. Yüksek is the co-founder and member of the Career and Talent Management Organization. He has mastered various programming languages (C, C ++, Visual Basic, C #, ASP.net, JAVA, PHP) and database management systems (Data Modeling (EER Modeling), SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL).

Prof. Yüksek is married and has three daughters.