3 BS Alumni

Tuna Tuncer (CS), while a student at Özyeğin University's Computer Science department, served as a Student Ambassador at Microsoft Turkey. Under the supervision of Assistant Prof. Emre Sefer for his graduation thesis, he utilized state-of-the-art neural networks capable of predicting stock price movements and subsequently published and presented a paper at the 3rd ACM International Conference on AI in Finance. He also engaged in research to optimize software continuous integration processes with Prof. Darko Marinov from UIUC, Assistant Prof. Wing Lam from GMU, and Assistant Prof. August Shi from UT Austin, which led to a significant pull request to the apache/shardingsphere project and a paper published in ASE 2023. During his research at Özyeğin, he led the development of a diffusion-based model for video instance segmentation in Assistant Prof. Sedat Özer's lab. Upon concluding his undergraduate studies, he embarked on a Master's degree in Informatics at the Technical University of Munich in Germany, where he presently continues to advance his academic pursuits.

Mert Kavala graduated from Kabataş Erkek Lisesi and started his undergraduate studies in the Civil Engineering program at Özyeğin University with a full scholarship. Throughout his four years at the Özyeğin University, he had the opportunity to enhance both socially and academically. He served on the executive board for 3.5 years and was president of the OzU Construction Club in 2021. In his undergraduate studies, Mert served as an undergraduate teaching assistant for Static and Construction Management courses.

Additionally, he took on the role of undergraduate research assistant in the field of self-healing concrete materials at Assoc. Prof. Zeynep Başaran Bundur’s Advanced Concrete Materials laboratory. In 2022, Mert graduated from Özyeğin University with a GPA of 3.71, ranking first in the department. He expanded his graduation project in collaboration with project members under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Feyza Çinicioğlu and Assoc. Prof. Zeynep Başaran Bundur and presented it in the 18th Young Geotechnical Engineers Symposium. Their paper titled ‘Microbially Induced Carbonate Precipitation (MICP) Use for Slope Stabilization in Sands and Clays’ was selected as the best paper.

In January 2023, he started the combined Ph.D. program in Geotechnical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. As a graduate research assistant, he is currently researching bio-catalyzed CO2 sequestration technologies. Furthermore, he has been working as a graduate teaching assistant for the Introduction to Geotechnical Engineering course for the past two semesters. He received the Larry Goertz Graduate Fellowship from the Cockrell School of Engineering for 2022-2023 in recognition of his academic achievements.

Yıldıray Yılmaz (CE), received his bachelor’s degree at Özyeğin University with a high-honor certificate in the civil engineering department. He is awarded as being the highest ranked student among 2020 graduation class. During his undergraduate studies, he founded Özyeğin University’s Construction Club and ran as president for two years. The construction club has reached more than 200 members during his presidency and organized more than 20 different events.

His original research paper was published with the great help of Dr. Seyis at ‘Building and Environment’ journal under the title of ‘Mapping the scientific research of the life cycle assessment in the construction industry: A scientometric analysis’.

Parallel with his master studies, he joined Metsims Sustainability Consulting company in October 2021. For over a year, he works as a sustainability consultant. His primary task is to analyze and model the environmental burdens of construction products and building from life cycle perspective. So far, he has modelled and assessed the environmental impacts of 20+ different construction products and one residential and one factory building. Besides environmental performance modelling, he currently works on improving one of the biggest life cycle assessment database for construction products in the world.