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.

Naz (CS) worked in Microsoft as a trainee when she was a sophomore. During this tenure, she regularly contributed to young children in teaching computer programming and promotional activities. During her internship at Vodafone, she worked in Data Science R&D and Business Intelligence IT departments. She got 3 patents and she had the opportunity to be the "first author" in all these patents. In her last year, she was elected to represent Özyeğin University's Faculty of Engineering in the Müdek accreditation committee.

After graduating from Özyeğin University, she did her Master's in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Leuven in Belgium. She completed this advanced master's program as an honor student in 1 year. She worked as a data scientist at Amazon Netherlands for 4 years. In this process, she provided consultancy to many companies in the Fortune 400 list in the field of artificial intelligence. She took part in the project that added artificial intelligence to the races of Formula 1. Finally, she started to work in Google, Netherlands. She is currently working at Google as a Machine Learning Specialist Engineer.

Seyma Gürel graduated with honors from the Department of Civil Engineering in Özyeğin University in 2018. Seyma dedicated herself to her research career that began during her undergraduate studies with Dr. Zeynep Başaran Bundur. At Özyeğin University, Seyma worked as a research assistant and received a TÜBİTAK scholarship while still an undergraduate, contributing to projects focused on self-healing concrete and the improvement of concrete rheology using bacteria.After completing her undergraduate studies, Seyma decided to further pursue her interest in construction materials by enrolling in a Master's program in materials engineering. She was accepted into the Mechanical Engineering master's program at Koç University, where she continued her research on high-entropy alloys.

Upon completing her master's degree, Seyma proceeded to pursue a Ph.D. at ETH Zurich's Department of Civil Engineering, continuing her academic career. Currently, she is conducting research on digital concrete production at ETH Zurich. Throughout her educational journey, Seyma actively participated in various student clubs. Alongside other founding friends at Özyeğin University, she established a volunteer club, leading various aid projects and providing support to sister schools.