Ethem Alpaydın received his BSc from the Department of Computer Engineering of Bogazici University in 1987 and the degree of Docteur es Sciences from Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in 1990. He did his postdoctoral work at the International Computer Science Institute, Berkeley between Feb-Aug 1991.
In September 1991, he was appointed Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Engineering of Bogazici University. He was appointed Associate Professor in 1996 and Professor in 2002 in the same department where he worked until February 2019.
In May 2019, he started working in the Department of Computer Science at Özyeğin University.
As a visiting researcher, he worked at the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT in 1994, International Computer Science Institute, Berkeley in 1997, IDIAP, Switzerland in 1998, and TU Delft in 2014.
He was Fulbright Senior Scholar in 1997/1998 and received the Research Excellence Award from the Bogazici University Foundation in 1998 (junior faculty) and 2008 (senior faculty), the Young Scientist Award from the Turkish Academy of Sciences in 2001, and the Scientific Encouragement Award from the Turkish Scientific and Technical Research Council in 2002. He is a Member of The Science Academy, Turkey.
His book Introduction to Machine Learning was published by The MIT Press in October 2004, its second edition was published in February 2010, and its third edition was published in August 2014. Its fourth edition was published in April 2020, and has since been translated into Chinese and German.
Machine Learning: The New AI was published by The MIT Press as part of the Essential Knowledge Series in September 2016; Japanese, Russian, Korean, Chinese, Turkish, and Croation editions have subsequently been published. Machine Learning: Revised and Updated Edition was published in August 2021; Finnish edition has since been published.