3 BS Alumni

Dr. Birgül Cansu Acartürk  (CE) completed her undergraduate degree in civil engineering in 2017, finishing as the second in her department. Throughout her university years, she served as both a research and teaching assistant, honing her academic skills. Her undergraduate studies, particularly focusing on sustainable and innovative building material systems, influenced her decision to pursue doctoral education in these areas. She successfully completed her doctoral studies at The Ohio State University in 2022 with a thesis titled "Novel and Sustainable Cementitious Systems: Improving Calcium Sulfoaluminate Cement and Bacterial Concrete Properties."

During her doctoral period, Dr. Acartürk published numerous academic articles on sustainable cement-based systems and bacterial concrete. She also presented her research at national and international conferences. Currently, Dr. Acartürk continues her career as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder, where her research is concentrated on bio-based cementitious systems. Her work aims to develop innovative approaches to reduce carbon dioxide emissions during cement production and usage.

İrem Karamete (IE) was the captain of the fencing team of the university for 5 years during her student life and won many Turkish Champion titles for the university. She became the first fencer to represent Turkey after 32 years by qualifying for the 2016 Rio Olympics while she graduated from the university. Benefiting from the opportunities offered by the university as well as her heavy sports life, İrem had the opportunity to do a summer internship at GAP company within FIBA Group and Amsterdam Credit Europe Bank (CEB). 

As soon as İrem graduated from Özyeğin University, she completed her master's degree in Global Marketing Management at Boston University. Completing her American adventure, İrem moved to Italy in 2019 to prepare for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and represented our country in the olympics twice. 

She is the president of the Fencing European Confederation Athlete’s Commission and she also speaks Italian at an advanced level. While she is managing intense sports life, she also works for the one of the most well known Australian online book companies, Fishpond, as an e-commerce manager of Amazon EU accounts. Irem is currently fighting for the quota for the 2024 Paris Olympics to represent our country in the Olympics for the third time.

Ekrem Çetinkaya (CS), graduated with a bachelor's degree in computer science from Özyeğin University in 2018 and completed a master's program with a thesis under the supervision of Dr. Furkan Kıraç in 2019. Between 2019 and 2023, he completed his doctoral studies on Video Encoding with Machine Learning at the University of Klagenfurt. During this period, he worked as a research assistant on the ATHENA project, which was conducted in partnership with Bitmovin. Throughout his 4-year research career, he published over 15 papers in prestigious conferences and journals and filed for 3 patents, one of which has been issued. In 2021, the article he wrote was awarded the "Best New Streaming Innovation of the Year” award. He is currently continuing his academic work in video coding and multimedia fields with Assoc. Prof. Ali C. Beğen.