Born in Ankara in 1960. He is a graduate of TED Ankara College (Class of ’77). He received his BSc (Hons.) in Physics with Computing, MSc in Computing and PhD in Computer Science from the University of Kent (UK). He joined the Middle East Technical University, Department of Computer Engineering in 1987 as an Assistant Professor and became Associate Professor in the same department in 1991. In 1998 he joined the Eastern Mediterranean University (EMU) Department of Computer Engineering and became Full Professor at the same Department. From 1999 till 2003 he has served as the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at the EMU.

He played an important role to establish an IEEE Computer Society Chapter in Turkey. He contributed to IEEE as the Turkey Section Chair and is the recipient of the IEEE Third Millennium Medal. He is currently a Senior Member of the IEEE.

Professor Tolun has made scientific contributions to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning and in particular to symbolic inductive learning. His Inductive Learning Algorithm (ILA) was the subject of several MS theses and a PhD dissertation completed at various Universities around the World.