Erbil Karaman

Erbil received his B.Sc. degree from METU Computer Engineering Department in 2009. He has held product, engineering, strategy and R&D leadership roles at successful startups in Silicon Valley including Facebook and Lyft. Erbil is also an angel investor and the founder of 500 Istanbul, the most active seed investment group in Turkey.

Cagla Cıg Karaman

Çağla Çığ Karaman received her B.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering from Middle East Technical University in 2008 and her M.Sc. degree in Computer Science from Utrecht University's Game and Media Technology Master's programme in 2010. She conducted her master's thesis studies on realistic emotional gaze and head behavior generation for robots at MIRALab, Geneva. After returning back to Turkey, she joined Koç University's Intelligent User Interfaces Lab where she acquired her Ph.D. degree on gaze-based activity prediction and gaze-based behavioral biometrics. Currently, she is a research engineer at sahibinden.com where she applies her expertise on machine learning, predictive analytics, and human-computer interaction to industry challenges related to e-commerce.

Kadir Çetinkaya

Kadir has B.Sc.s from METU Computer Engineering and Mathematics departments. He likes participating in capture the flag and competitive programming contests. His interest areas include compilers, machine learning and operating systems. Currently he is working as a software engineer at Google, developing C++ tools like clangd to improve developer experience.

Gökdeniz Karadağ

Gökdeniz has B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees, from METU Computer Engineering Department. His research interests were on computer security and high dynamic range imaging. He worked as a System Administrator and Teaching Assistant at METU CENG, before joining Google Site Reliability Engineering(SRE) team. As part of SRE's mission of making distributed systems available, performant and robust; he is currently focusing on deployment automation. He is an amateur Bass player, and a proponent of Free Software Movement.

Serdar Çiftçi

Serdar Çiftçi is an Assistant Professor and Chair of Department of Computer Engineering in Harran University. He has received both his MSc and PhD degrees from the Department of Computer Engineering at Middle East Technical University respectively in 2011 and 2017. He obtained his BSc degree from the Department of Computer Engineering at Selcuk University in 2007. During his PhD, he visited the Multimedia Signal Processing Group (MMSPG) laboratory at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) as a visiting researcher between January-March 2016. His current research mainly focuses on visual privacy protection. During his MSc and PhD degrees he worked as a Reseach/Teaching Assistant at Department of Computer Engineering in Middle East Technical University and mentored dozens of graduation projects (CENG491/CENG492).

Fatma Gülşah Kandemir

Fatma Gulsah Kandemir received both her Bachelors and M.Sc. degrees from METU Computer Engineering Department in 2009 and 2012, respectively. She had worked as a Software Engineer in Aselsan Inc. for 4 years before moving to San Francisco, California in 2013. She worked as a Technical Leader for an online community and e-commerce startup called Ipsy for 4,5 years. In 2018, she joined Linkedin as a Senior Software Engineer, to work on an enterprise platform that provides real-time analytical insights to its customers.

Recep Çağrı Yüzbaşıoğlu

Çağrı Yüzbaşıoğlu has established ISSD in 2009 in Ankara. For the recent 10 years he has been working in ISSD as CEO mainly heading business development department. Main focus of the company is to design and develop intelligent traffic management systems in which traffic engineers, systems engineers, software and hardware engineers take part in. In the recent 10 years time, he has lead ISSD from 2 man start-up to a company that has team of 55 people with market share of %65 in adaptive traffic management systems. Before ISSD, he has worked for Havelsan in Ankara, IBM in Paris/Seoul and Grundig in İstanbul as a senior systems engineer.

İsmet Yalabık

Ismet Yalabik received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering from Middle East Technical University (METU), Ankara, Turkey, in 2004 and in 2007, respectively. During his master's degree he worked as Research Assistant at Computer Engineering Department in Middle East Technical University. After spending many years in simulation industry (KaTRON Ltd.) and industrial automation areas (evoline TR subsidiary of Siemens Industrial Automation) as software team leader and software architect, he joined Amazon Video in 2013. He is currently working on developing world's only complete video streaming service. He also was a former Turkish Judo Champion.

Elif Sürer

Elif Sürer received her Ph.D in Bioengineering in 2011 from the University of Bologna. She received her M.S. and B.S. degrees in Computer Engineering from Boğaziçi University in 2007 and 2005, respectively. From 2013 to 2015 she worked as a post-doctoral researcher in University of Milan in the EU Project REWIRE where she developed video games for the rehabilitation of stroke and Neglect patients. She joined METU Graduate School of Informatics’s Modelling and Simulation Department in 2015 and worked on the training of children having Down Syndrome using video games, which was fully supported by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK). She is currently working as an Assistant Professor at the METU Graduate School of Informatics’ Multimedia Informatics program. She is funded by the H2020 project eNOTICE as METU local coordinator as of September 2017 and also collaborates as a researcher in several interdisciplinary national and EU-funded projects. She is also a mentor at METU Design Factory and bang. Art Innovation Prix. Her research interests are serious games, virtual/mixed reality, human and canine movement analysis and reinforcement learning.

Cüneyt Mertayak

Cuneyt Mertayak is an entrepreneur, a software engineer, and an angel investor. Lately, he founded Caressa, multi-generational inclusive family application. Before Caressa, Cuneyt was a founding member of Udemy, a marketplace for online education. His notable latest experiences are architecting scalable software systems, machine learning applications; marketing D2C solutions and building IoT devices. He holds BSc and MSc degrees of Computer Engineering from METU.

Merve Asiler

Merve Asiler received her B.S. degrees from the Department of Mathematics (major) and the Department of Computer Engineering (double major) at Middle East Technical University in 2013 and her M.Sc. degree from the Department of Computer Engineering, Middle East Technical University in 2016. She started her career as a research and teaching assistant in 2013 in the same department and continued until 2018. During her M.Sc., she conducted a techno-thesis research with the cooperation of Kale Yazılım San. ve Tic. A.Ş.. Currently, she works as a software developer in Modelling and Simulation Environment at TUSAŞ. At the same time, she pursues her Ph.D. degree in the Department of Computer Engineering at Middle East Technical University. Her research interests include computer graphics, digital geometry processing, differential geometry and algebraic topology.

Raşit Özdemir

Raşit Özdemir received his B.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering at Middle East Technical University. He is currently a graduate student at the same department and working for Turkish Aerospace, Inc. as Software Design Engineer. He has 3+ years experience specializing in robotics, embedded systems, and image processing. His project team "Collaborator" was awarded Second Prize among 30 senior design projects at CENG Demo Day '18 with a robotic arm application which is based on human-robot interaction and artificial intelligence.

Gökçe Yıldırım Kalkan

Dr. Gökçe Yıldırım Kalkan received her B.Sc. degree from the Department of Computer Engineering at Middle East Technical University (METU) in 2002 To pursue her passion in Computer Graphics, she did her M.Sc. and PhD. graduate studies on this subject at the same department in 2005 and 2014, respectively. She worked in Meteksan Systems between 2002 and 2006. Since 2002, she has taken key roles in many large scale simulation projects. In 2006, she co-founded Simsoft Computer Technologies and since then, she has been the general manager. In Simsoft, she conveys her academic knowledge and industrial experience to the simulation projects as well as the management of the company. Her research interests include visualization of large datasets, physically-based animation and image generators.

Haldun Yıldız

In 2015, he graduated from METU Computer Engineering Department. He worked in various IoT projects at Accenture for 2 years. Since 2017, he has been working at Parabol as Software Architect. His main work areas are IoT and client-side technologies.

Turgay Çelik

Turgay Çelik received his BS (2003), Msc (2005) and Ph.D. (2013) degrees in Computer Engineering from Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey. He worked as a Research Assistant at Computer Engineering Department, Hacettepe University between 2003-2005. He has about 15 years of hands-on experience in software industry with different roles such as Software Engineer, Lead Software Engineer, Technical Lead and Product Line Manager at MilSOFT, ASELSAN, and OpsGenie. Since 2018, he has been working as a Technical Leader & Scrum Master at MilSOFT. He is primarily interested in Agile Methodologies, Software Architecture, and Cloud Computing in both academic and industrial context. He also has experience in forming and mentoring agile teams, talent acquisition, and improvement.

İsmail Gerçek

İsmail Gerçek is the manager of software and hardware development design team at NanoMagnetics Instruments and leads the team in several projects. Ismail completed his MSc. at Boğaziçi University and his undergraduate studies at İ.T.Ü. He worked on embedded systems, hardware design and digital design for the last 12 years. Currently, he is focused on system level design decisions in wide area survaillance systems.

Ayşenur Birturk

Dr. Ayşenur Birtürk received her B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Engineering from Middle East Technical University (METU), Ankara, Turkey. She worked as a Programmer and Systems Expert at IsBank Computer Center, Ankara, Turkey between September'85-September'89. She was a Research/Teaching Assistant at METU, Dept. of Computer Engineering, Turkey between September'89-February'94. She worked as a Summer Research Assistant and later as an Academic Intern at NEC Research Institute, Inc., Computer Science Division, Princeton, NJ, USA between the dates June'96 - Nov'96, June'97 -August'97 and June'98 - August'98. She is an instructor at METU, Dept. of Computer Engineering since February'94. Her research interests include Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics, Knowledge Engineering, Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, Data Mining, Expert Systems, Web Personalization, and Recommender Systems.

Aziz Sever

1993 yılında ODTÜ Elektrik Elektronik Mühendisliğinden mezun oldu. Aynı yıl TÜBİTAK Multimedia grubunda yazılım mühendisi olarak çalışmaya başladı. 1995-2000 yılları arasında Siemens bünyesinde Telekom alanında çalışmaya başladı. 1998- 2000 yıllar arasında Almanya ve Avusturya Siemens’te yazılım geliştirme görevlerinde bulundu. 2000-2004 yılları arasında Amerika’da SS8 firması bünyesinde SS7 protokollerini kullanan uygulamalar ve bu protokoller için alt yapı geliştirme projelerinde yer aldı. 2004-2017 yılları arasında ARGELA firmasında mimar, teknik müdür, direktör ve Orta-Kuzey Afrika iş geliştirme direktörü görevlerinde bulundu. ARGELA firmasının kurulmasında çekirdek ekipten yer almıştır. 2007 yılında ARGELA Ankara şubesinin kurulmasında yer alıp, 2007-2017 yılları arasında aynı zamanda Ankara şube müdürü olarak da çalıştı. 2017 yılı sonu itibarı ile ULAK Haberleşme A.Ş.’de Program Yönetim Direktörü olarak işe başlamış, halen bu görevde yer almaktadır.

Onur Tortamış

Ortadoğu Teknik Üniversitesi Bilgisayar Mühendisliği mezunudur. 17 yıldır savunma sanayiinde, komuta kontrol yazılımları projelerinde görev almıştır. Halen ESEN'de Teknik Liderlik görevini yürütmektedir.

Gönül Günal Değirmendereli

Gönül Günal Değirmendereli received her BSc degree from Computer Engineering Department at Middle East Technical University in 1983, and MSc degree from Boğaziçi University on Engineering and Technology Management in 2005. She worked at IBM as Education Specialist; at I-BİMSA as Database and Application Support Specialist, Business Intelligence and Data Warehouse Consultant, and Project Leader respectively; and at SAS Institute as Principal Consultant and Project Manager. She leaded numerous Business Intelligence, Data Warehouse and Data Quality projects especially in Banking and Telecommunication companies. She had contributed on some World Bank projects as a MIS consultant. Currently she is a PhD candidate in Cognitive Science Department at METU Informatics Institute.

Deniz Kaya

Deniz Kaya graduated from METU Electrical-Electronics Engineering in 2002, and received his MSc in 2005. His professional career started in Guidance & Control Labs at TUBITAK-SAGE. In 2011 he joined Arçelik IoT Labs and currently he works as the IoT R&D Manager.

Eda Yüksel

Eda graduated from METU with BS and MS Degrees in Computer Engineer Department. She is working in the tech industry for 13 years. After her career in Siemens and TUBITAK, she is now the COO of VLMedia for 5 years. Her research and expertise areas are Mobile Application Development and Product Design. She is a Tech & Trends follower, official Zumba instructor and mom of one.

Taner Ayhan

Taner Ayhan received her B.Sc.(1987)and M.Sc(1989) degrees in Computer Engineering from METU. He worked as management consultant for Accenture in Istanbul and London, assistant general manager in personal banking for Fortisbank, general manager for Citibank Turkey and assistant general manager in retail banking for Anadolubank, respectively. Now he is a board member in Anadolubank Netherlands.

Güven Orkun Tanık

Güven Orkun Tanık graduated from METU Computer Engineering in 2006, Electrics and Electronics Engineering in 2007. He completed his M.Sc. in computer engineering in 2010, and is still working on his Ph.D. in METU. He started working in Havelsan in 2007. He transferred to Arçelik in 2012 and is currently leadingMachine Learning and Data Analytics efforts in Innovation Directorate.

Veysi İşler

Sezgin Küçükkaraaslan

Sezgin Küçükkaraaslan is the Co-Founder & CTO at OpsGenie which has been acquired by Atlassian the last year. He is a software architect with expertise in all aspects of the software development life cycle, including requirements analysis, design, development and production support. Prior to OpsGenie, he worked as a Senior Full Stack Developer at iFountain - a company that mostly focused on the integration of 1st generation network infrastructure monitoring suites. Sezgin holds a degree in Computer Science & Engineering from Sabanci University.

Hakan Aydemir

Hakan Aydemir got BS and MS degree on Electronics Engineering and is doing his PhD at Clausthal TU, Germany computer science department. He has been working in various fields of defence industry projects for more than 14 years. He was managing integrated project teams and designing software architecture and developing systems and tools. He is also consultant to “Digital Transformation” department in Turkish Aerospace company. His expertise on topic is Amazon Web Services, Docker, On-Premise Cloud Solutions, Pivotal Cloud Foundry, IOT peer to peer scalable architectures. He is one of the contributors of book “Advances in Aeronautical Informatics: Technologies Towards Flight 4.0“ recently published. He is currently working for Turkish Aerospace as a Integrated Product Team Lead.

Gökberk Cinbis

Gokberk Cinbis graduated from Bilkent University, Turkey, in 2008, and received an M.A. degree from Boston University, USA, in 2010. He was a doctoral student at INRIA Grenoble, France, between 2010-2014, and received a PhD degree in computer science from Universite de Grenoble, in 2014. He received the best PhD thesis award from French Association for Pattern Recognition (AFRIF) in 2015. He was an assistant professor at Bilkent University between 2016-2017, and, joined METU Department of Computer Engineering as an assistant professor in September 2017. His research areas include computer vision and machine learning, with special interest in deep learning, learning with weak supervision and statistical image models. .

Itır Önal Ertuğrul

Itır Önal Ertuğrul received her B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Computer Engineering Department at Middle East Technical University in 2011, 2013 and 2017, respectively. She worked as a Research Assistant at Computer Engineering Department, Middle East Technical University between 2011 - 2017. During her Ph.D., she visited Pattern Recognition and Bioinformatics Group at Delft University of Technology as a visiting Ph.D. student between July – September 2016. After her Ph.D., she worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at Affect Analysis Group, University of Pittsburgh. Currently, she is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University. Her research interests include affective computing, facial expression analysis and biomedical signal processing.

Ömer Nebil Yaveroğlu

Ömer Nebil Yaveroğlu received his B.Sc. (2008) and M. Sc. (2010) in Computer Engineering from Middle East Technical University. He worked on graph theory and bioinformatics during his Ph.D. studies at Imperial College London (graduated 2014). After continuing his research work at University of California, Irvine as a postdoctoral researcher, he joined Google U.K. in October 2015. He has been working for Google Play, finding alternative app models and techniques for efficiently delivering apps through Play Store.

Onur Tolga Şehitoğlu

Dr. Onur Tolga Şehitoğlu took BS (1992), MS (1996) and Phd (2002) degrees from METU Computer Engineering. He works as an instructor since 2003 in same department. His research interests are evolutionary algorithms, operating system and network security, design optimization. .