3 BS Alumni

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.

She (EE) received her undergraduate and Master of Science degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Özyeğin University. She is now a Ph.D. student at the Institute of Physics at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz with her research in quantum computing and processors. She has always been curious to explore and understand the universe because just what we saw was not enough. As a result, she found myself becoming a scientist. She has seen theoretical objects which are common in different fields. Also, an important step in her journey was to learn algorithmic thinking which came with an object-oriented programming training.

I have always tried to understand physical correspondences of theoretical objects and wondered about transitions from theoretical formulations to experimental implementations. She had the opportunity to research in the field of underwater optical wireless communications and quantum key distribution. She had a chance to publish articles, join collaborations and patent her works.

Osman Furkan Kınlı (CS 2018),obtained his master's degree in Computer Science the following year. Within the scope of his master's thesis, he worked on similar image retrieval using Capsule Networks. He is currently continuing his doctoral thesis work. His research areas cover image processing, computer vision, image manipulation and restoration, illuminance and colors, and computational photography. He has achieved awards in international competitions related to night photography rendering in consecutive years. He has received the best reproducibility report and the best reviewer awards in international challenges on the reproducibility of academic research in Computer Science. In addition to his doctoral studies, he has also worked as a teaching assistant in undergraduate courses and as a research assistant in different research projects for his department. Furthermore, as venturing into the entrepreneurial journey in early 2020, he founded a Canadian-based company called T-Fashion, which provides services in AI-driven fashion trend analysis and generative fashion design.