Academic Staff who have just joined the METU Family

Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Arsev Umur AYDINOĞLU 
Graduate School of Social Sciences

Arsev Umur Aydinoglu is an interdisciplinary social scientist. After completing his PhD in 2011 at the University of Tennessee, he worked at the University of South Carolina and NASA in the US and conducted research at the ELSI, Japan. His research focus is interdisciplinary collaborative science; however, he is interested in topics as diverse as virtual teams, research data management, astrobiology, origins of life, complex adaptive systems theory, evaluation studies, design thinking, science and technology studies, and science communication. He is a founding member of the Turkish Science and Technology Studies Network, a member of METU Design Factory, and a member of Blue Marble Space Institute of Science.

 

Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Ezel BOYACI 
Chemistry

Dr. Ezel Boyacı studied chemistry at the Izmir Institute of Technology, Turkey, where she received her M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Analytical Chemistry in 2008 and 2012, respectively. In 2012 she became a postdoctoral fellow at University of Waterloo, Canada in Prof. Dr. Janusz Pawliszyn's Research Group. In 2016 she became a research associate in the same university. Since September 2017 she is working at Department of Chemistry, Middle East Technical University, Turkey. Her research interests focused on clinical, pharmaceutical and environmental applications of various formats of solid phase microextraction (SPME), development of new extractive phases for SPME and in vivo brain metabolomics studies using SPME.

Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Fulden İBRAHİMHAKKIOĞLU 
Philosophy

I joined the METU Philosophy Department in September 2017. I offer courses on feminist philosophy, political philosophy, and ethics. I received two B.A.’s from Koç University in Psychology and Philosophy, an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Oregon. I taught in the Philosophy Department for four years, and the Women’s and Gender Studies Department for a year at the University of Oregon. Before I joined METU, I worked as a lecturer at Koç University. In my doctoral dissertation entitled The Politics of Paranoia: Affect, Temporality, and Epistemology of Securitization, I examined the transnational logic underlying routine practices of national security and analyzed its workings at the intersection of racialization, gender, and militarization. I now focus on the possibilities of alliances across difference that organize in response to the aforementioned structures of power, enabling new forms of life and creating spaces for the practice of freedom. I consider the queer movement in this context and I will be offering a new master’s/doctoral course entitled Queer Philosophy in Spring 2018. In addition to my academic work, I’ve been actively writing and playing music for the past seventeen years. I play the guitar and sing in a punk band. I also manage a feminist punk collective which publishes zines on a non-regular basis and organizes shows in an effort to support women in music.

Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Gökberk CİNBİŞ 
Computer Engineering

R. Gokberk Cinbis graduated from Bilkent University, Turkey, in 2008, and received an M.A. degree from Boston University, USA, in 2010. He was a doctoral student at INRIA Grenoble, France, between 2010-2014, and received a PhD degree in computer science from Universite de Grenoble, in 2014. He received the best PhD thesis award from French Association for Pattern Recognition (AFRIF) in 2015. He was an assistant professor at Bilkent University between 2016-2017, and, joined METU Department of Computer Engineering in September 2017. His research areas include computer vision and machine learning, with special interest in deep learning, learning with weak supervision and statistical image models.

Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Hande ALEMDAR 
Computer Engineering

I received my BSc, MSc and PhD degrees from Bogazici University, Department of Computer Engineering in 2004, 2009 and 2015, respectively. My PhD thesis entitled 'Human Activity Recognition with Wireless Sensor Networks using Machine Learning' was the recipient of the Bogazici University Research Fund (BAP) Best Thesis Award. Afterwards, I joined Grenoble Informatics Institute in France as a post-doctoral researcher. I took part in an industry collaboration project co-funded by ST microelectronics. My research topic was implementing deep learning methods on an energy-efficient hardware. I joined METU Computer Engineering Department as of Spring 2018. My research interests include pervasive computing, data science, big data analytics, human interpretable machine learning. I enjoy going hiking, running, sailing and skiing whenever possible.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Klaus W. SCHMIDT 
Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Dr. Klaus W. Schmidt received the Diploma and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical, Electronic, and Communication Engineering from the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany, in 2002 and 2005, respectively. He was a lecturer at the Chair of Automatic Control, University of Erlangen-Nürnberg between 2005 and 2010. He joined the Department of Electronic and Communication Engineering and the Department of Mechatronics Engineering, Çankaya University, Ankara in 2010 and 2011, respectively and has been an Associate Professor since 2012. Since September 2017, Dr. Schmidt is an Associate Professor at the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, METU, Ankara. His research interests include supervisory control for discrete event systems, automation systems, industrial communication networks, intelligent transportation systems and project control. He is an Associate Editor for "Discrete Event Dynamic Systems – Theory and Applications" as well as the "Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences".

Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Mehmet Bülent ÖZER 
Mechanical Engineering

Dr. M. Bülent Özer received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from METU Mechanical Engineering Department. He had his Ph.D. degree in 2004 from Mechanical Engineering Department of University of Illinois at Chicago where later, he worked as a post-doctoral research associate. Between 2006-2010, he worked as a principal R&D Engineer in biomedical device industry at Baxter Healthcare Corp., Chicago, Illinois. He worked in new product development and product support for dialysis instruments, stem cell separators and infusion pumps. In 2010, he started to work as an instructor in METU Northern Cyprus Campus and later worked as an assistant professor in TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Mechanical Engineering Department. His research interests include mechanical vibrations, acoustics, ultrasonics, acoustophoresis and biomedical device design.

Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Mehmet Hilmi DEMİR
Philosophy

Mehmet Hilmi Demir, who received his PhD in philosophy and cognitive science from Indiana University, mainly works in the following areas: Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Cognitive Science, Philosophy of Information and Philosophy of Probability. His research has appeared in publications such as Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Mind, Logique et Analyse, and Cilicia Journal of Philosophy. In addition to his academic work, he volunteers in social projects that aim to support disadvantaged groups in our country. In his spare time, he likes to read history books and visit historical places, especially the ones from the Seljuk era.

Prof. Murat BAÇ
Philosophy

Murat Baç received his B.Sc. degree from the Electronics Engineering Department and the Master's degree from the Philosophy Department of METU. He got his PhD degree in philosophy at the University of Alberta, Canada. He continued his studies on a post-docoral scholarship in the Philosophy Department of Dalhousie University, Canada. He also spent a Sabbatical year in the Universitat de Barcelona. He joined Boğaziçi University in 2003 and worked there for 14 years. As a result of his studies, he was granted the Award for Superior Achievement in Academic Research by Boğaziçi University. Between the years 2005-2010 Murat Baç served as the co-editor of Felsefe Tartışmaları: A Turkish Journal of Philosophy, the first internationally indexed philosophy journal of Turkey. He also served as a referee for many national and international philosophy journals, and is currently serving as an advisory board member for several national academic journals. Murat Baç defended his own philosophical views mostly in the fields of truth & reality, epistemology, ontology, cognitive science, philosophy of science, history of philosophy, history of science, phenomenology, and critique of contemporary culture.

Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Mustafa ERKAYAOĞLU
Mining Engineering

Dr. Mustafa Erkayaoğlu earned his BSc and MSc degrees in 2008 and 2011 from the METU Mining Engineering Department and completed his PhD studies in 2015 at the University of Arizona, USA with a minor degree in Systems and Industrial Engineering. During his work at the University of Arizona as a Research Assistant, he also worked as a Business Intelligence Analyst at a consulting company that serves the mining industry in technology solutions and BI applications. Dr. Mustafa Erkayaoğlu joined METU Mining Engineering Department in October, 2017. His main research areas are improving production performance in the mining industry, mine design and mine planning, fleet management systems, continuous improvement, business intelligence applications and data mining.

Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Naz SAYARI
Business Administration

Dr. Naz Sayarı received her B.S. degree from Bilkent University – Department of Economics in 2004. She had her M.S. degree from Baskent University in 2008 and her Ph.D. from Middle East Technical University (METU) – Department of Business Administration in 2013. She worked as a post-doctoral research scholar at Wake Forest University - School of Business in North Carolina/USA between 2014 and 2015. Before pursuing her academic career she also worked in international corporations and organizations such as PWC, DFK International and Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Her research interests include corporate governance, risk management, corporate social responsibility and financial performance analyses of firms. In addition to her on going research studies, she currently teaches financial and managerial accounting as an assistant professor at the undergraduate and master levels in METU.

Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Özcan YAZICI
Mathematics

I graduated from Department of Mathematics at METU in 2006 and received my MS degree in mathematics from Sabancı University in 2006, PhD degree in mathematics from Syracuse University in 2015. I worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Texas A&M Univertsity at Qatar (2015-2016) and as a visiting assistant professor at METU NCC (2016-2017). As of July 2017, I have been working at the department of mathematics, METU. My research interests include several complex variables, complex dynamics and complex geometry.

Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Senem TURHAN
Industrial Design

Senem Turhan is both a design researcher and an educator. Her study areas are human-centered research (generative research, participatory approaches), design thinking and futures thinking. Recently, she has involved in research projects as a senior design researcher at Sustain!DRL team and contributed to courses as a part time instructor at Middle East Technical University. Previously, she worked as a product designer in a furniture company, then worked as a research and teaching assistant in the Department of Industrial Design at METU. She pursued her post-doctoral studies at UNSW, Sydney. She got her M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees at METU. Her master thesis is about on the state of sustainable design education in the undergraduate industrial design programs in Turkey. Her doctoral study focuses on generative research for the idea generation phase of the product design and development process.

Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Serhan TÜRKYILMAZ
Chemistry

Serhan Türkyılmaz graduated from the Chemistry Department at METU in 1996. In 2007 he obtained his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Pittsburgh working on method development in solution phase mixture synthesis. He did postdoctoral work at Lehigh University from 2007 to 2011, where he studied the effect of inhalation anesthetics and isomers of cholesterol on lipid-lipid interaction energies in phospholipid bilayers. He then moved to the University of Notre Dame as a Walther Cancer Foundation Postdoctoral Research Associate where he worked on developing targeted liposomes, fluorescent dyes, and ligands for radiotracers with affinity towards bacterial and apoptotic mammalian cells. In 2014 he was appointed as an assistant professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at Istanbul University Faculty of Pharmacy. His current research interests include targeted liposomal systems and photodynamic therapy agents, in addition to medicinal and synthetic chemistry. He is married and has a son. He enjoys music, photography, and science fiction.

Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Zöhre KURT
Environmental Engineering

I received my bachelor degrees in Environmental Engineering and Chemical Engineering from METU in 2006 and 2007, respectively. I continued my studies in Georgia Institute of Technology where I got my masters in Environmental Engineering and Chemistry and Biomolecular Engineering in 2008 and 2011 and completed my PhD in 2012. After working as a postdoctoral fellow followed by being a researcher in Georgia Tech, I joined Florida State University in Panama. Here I served as researcher, lecturer and consultant at FSU Urban Risk Center, Institute of Scientific Research and High Technology, Engineering Works Corp. and Agrofino Corp. Currently I am working in the Department of Environmental Engineering at METU where I am defining a research line on establishing biodegradation pathways, finding solutions to agricultural contamination, using biomolecular, bioinformatical, microbiological and biochemical techniques to establish decontamination techniques. In addition to my research I am interested in bird watching, music, photography and eco-travel.