Sanem Sariel received the BS, MSc, and PhD degrees in Computer Engineering from Istanbul Technical University, in 1999, 2002 and 2007, respectively. During her PhD studies, she worked as a researcher at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA from 2004-2006. She was co-advised by Tucker Balch (Georgia Tech) and Nadia Erdogan (ITU).

Sanem is now a professor in the Department of Artificial Intelligence and Data Engineering at Istanbul Technical University. She is the founder and the coordinator of the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Laboratory. She is also the coordinator of the Game and Interaction Technologies Program at ITU.

Sanem's research interests include robot intelligence, robust cognitive systems, robot safety and multirobot systems. She is the PI of an ongoing project (funded by TUBITAK, the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) on predicting and preventing unsafe situations for cognitive robots.