3 BS Alumni

Mert (EE) is working in Eatron Technologies as a software engineer. He graduated in Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Özyeğin University as the valedictorian of his class. He had an interest to computer programming and thus, he had a minor degree in Computer Sciences. He got an international management class in University of East Anglia, UK. He also studied as an exchange student in Oregon State University, USA for one semestre. He became a part of an academic research article and he had a chance to present it in a conference.

After graduation he started to study master degree in Computer Sciences in Boğaziçi University to specialize in machine learning. At the same time he’s working as a full-time software engineer. Mert had an experience as a web application developer as front-end and cloud systems. He is planning to be a cofounder of an international software company.

Tuna Tuncer (CS), while a student at Özyeğin University's Computer Science department, served as a Student Ambassador at Microsoft Turkey. Under the supervision of Assistant Prof. Emre Sefer for his graduation thesis, he utilized state-of-the-art neural networks capable of predicting stock price movements and subsequently published and presented a paper at the 3rd ACM International Conference on AI in Finance. He also engaged in research to optimize software continuous integration processes with Prof. Darko Marinov from UIUC, Assistant Prof. Wing Lam from GMU, and Assistant Prof. August Shi from UT Austin, which led to a significant pull request to the apache/shardingsphere project and a paper published in ASE 2023. During his research at Özyeğin, he led the development of a diffusion-based model for video instance segmentation in Assistant Prof. Sedat Özer's lab. Upon concluding his undergraduate studies, he embarked on a Master's degree in Informatics at the Technical University of Munich in Germany, where he presently continues to advance his academic pursuits.

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.