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.

Okan (IE) is the Founding Member of Twin Science, the world’s first ed-tech company that combines science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning with SDGs education for young people to raise them as tomorrow’s changemakers. Twin Science has been recognized as a “Technology Pioneer” by the World Economic Forum, won BETT Awards 2020 and the Silver Play for Change Award from Toy Industry of Europe. 

As a student, Okan started his journey with the Young Guru Academy, one of Turkey’s leading NGOs, while studying at university. He was selected as one of the 50 young talents among 50,000 applicants to develop impact-driven projects for refugees, orphans, the visually impaired, and others through volunteerism. 

Passionate about eliminating inequality in education worldwide, Okan has also been leading a social responsibility project called the World Science Movement (WSM). The project aims to give children better access to STEM education. WSM has reached over 500,000 underprivileged children in Cameroon, Ghana, South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya and Turkey. Okan believes that no curious mind should be left behind and he is dedicated towards working for this purpose until reaching all young people around the world. 

Taha (CS), had participated various projects during his studies in Özyeğin University. He was a member of an agent, which had 1st rank in Automated Negotiating Agents Competition (ANAC). He had his PhD program in Southampton University in artificial intelligence and trust understanding of data with full scholarship.

He is working under the project, TUnDRA: Trust Understanding of Data and Reasoning Algorithms, which is funded by UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), covers topics around robust and discrete optimization techniques. He also worked on CyPrIAAn: Cyber Predictive Intelligence for Asset-based Analytics, which allow cyber analysts to predict both future attacks and the next steps of evolving cyber-attacks under UK Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) funding. After his PhD, he kept working in these projects and he had the chance to present his works in the international conferences. 

In 2022, Taha started wo work in an international investment bank, Goldman Sachs as a data engineer. He is working to increase the efficiency of the customers using artificial intelligence techniques in manufacturing and industrial areas with a UK based start up