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.

Sami Menteş (CS),completed his first-year internship at Microsoft. During his second internship at Periter Research and Technology Inc., the representative company of FLIR Surveillance Inc, he worked on Computer Vision software. During his undergraduate years, he developed an autonomous mapping robot founded by TUBITAK with his dormitory friends.

After completing his undergraduate studies, he pursued a master's degree with a focus on Computer Vision. In his first year, his work was selected for the ML Reproducibility Challenge 2020 and published in the ReScience-C Journal. Later on, under the guidance of Dr. Furkan Kıraç, he and the OzU Vision Lab members published workshop papers at the prestigious CVPR and ECCV conferences, graduating with high honors.

Currently, he works as a Computer Vision Engineer at Fizyr, a leading Computer Vision company in the robotic logistics sector based in the Netherlands.

Fatmanur (CE) graduated in 2020 as a Civil Engineer. During her Özyeğin journey, she participated in many domestic and international projects. She played a role in the establishment of the Fine Arts Club. At the same time, she was on the Board of Directors of the Construction Club for a while. When she was in second year, she participated in the Earthquake Resistant Building Design Competition organized by American Earthquake Engineering Research Institute. Being the team captain in the competition made me interested in Project Management.

She became a research assistant in three different areas of her interest. Her goal is to specialize in project management. While she was at university, she voluntarily studied Construction Cases at Kartal Anatolian Courthouse because of interest in contract management. Currently she is working as Consultant at the Department of Urban Rail Systems at the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure. She works on the management and control of rail systems projects in our country.