Adnan Yazıcı

Prof. Dr. Adnan YAZICI is a full professor and the chair of Department of Computer Engineering at Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. He received his PhD in Computer Science from the Department of EECS at Tulane University in the US, in 1991. He was a visiting professor at Tulane University between 1998 and 2000. His current research interests include; intelligent database systems, multimedia and video databases and information retrieval, wireless multimedia sensor networks, data science, and fuzzy database modeling. He received the IBM Faculty Award in 2011 and the Parlar Foundation's Young Investigator Award in 2001. He has published more than 200 international technical papers and co-authored/edited three books, which are titled Fuzzy Logic in Its 50. Year: New Developments, Directions and Challenges, Fuzzy Database Modeling and Uncertainty Approaches for Spatial Data Modeling and Processing: a Decision Support Perspective (by Springer). He is a member of IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) Fuzzy Systems Technical Committee (FSTC) and an Associate Editor of IEEE Trans. on Fuzzy Systems. He is also the director of the Multimedia Database Lab. at METU.

Onur Tolga Şehitoğlu

Dr. Onur Tolga Şehitoğlu took his BS, Msc and Phd degrees from METU Computer Engineering in 1992, 1996, and 2002 respectively. He is an instructor in the same department since 2002. His research interests include Evolutionary Computation, Operating Systems, and Information Security.

Ahmet Oğuz Akyüz

Ahmet Oğuz Akyüz graduated from the Department of Computer Engineering at METU in 2003. He obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Central Florida in 2007. During his Ph.D., he worked as a visiting research for one year at Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany. Before returning back to METU as an Assistant Professor, he worked in the OpenGL driver development team at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) for three years. Currently, he is working as an Associate Professor at METU Computer Engineering Department. His primary research interests are computer graphics and image processing with an emphasis on high dynamic range (HDR) and color imaging.

Sinan Kalkan

Sinan Kalkan received the M.Sc. degree in computer engineering from Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey, in 2003, and the Ph.D. degree in informatics from the University of Göttingen, Germany, in 2008. He joined the Department of Computer Engineering at METU after his PhD. Sinan Kalkan’s research interests include computer vision, cognitive robotics and deep learning.

Pelin Angın

Pelin Angın received her B.S. degree in Computer Engineering at Bilkent University in 2007 and her PhD degree in Computer Science at Purdue University in 2013. She worked as a Visiting Assistant Professor and a Postdoctoral Researcher at Purdue University between 2014 - 2016. Currently she is an Assistant Professor of Computer Engineering at METU. Her research interests lie in the fields of high-performance mobile-cloud computing, distributed systems security and cloud-based assistive technologies.

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.

Çiğdem Turhan

Çiğdem Turhan received her B.Sc., M.Sc and Ph.D degrees in Computer Engineering from METU. She worked in the Computer Engineering department as a research assistant and instructor in 1987-1998. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Software Engineering, Atılım University, Ankara, Turkey. She is the author of a number text books in the area of programming. Her research interests include natural language processing, machine translation, semantic web technologies and engineering education.

Mehmet Çakır

Upon graduation from Bilkent Üniversity Computer Science department with a BSc degree in 2001, Mehmet ÇAKIR completed his MSc degree with thesis subject “Security Assessment of Systems” in 2004. He is still on dissertation phase for his PhD studies within University of Ankara. He worked almost 7 years for Tubitak National Research Institute of Electronics and Cryptology as a senior researcher before establishing his start-up inside Middle East Technical University Technology Development Park named BEAM Teknoloji A.Ş. in 2011. He is still working as managing partner for BEAM Teknoloji and at the same time supporting new start-ups under BİGG Programme as a Business Mentor. As well as many social efforts, he is also providing commercialisation and innovation consultancy for graduation projects in Computer Science departments.

Burak Çiflikli

Burak heads Comodo Threat Research Lab (CTRL) and directs development activities as a part of Comodo Anti-Virus Lab (AVLab). Prior to Comodo, Burak managed R&D activities more than 10 years aiming to produce sustainable solutions and structures that meet the requirements of the public and private sectors on a global scale in Cyber Security, Defense and Aviation areas. Burak received his Undergraduate and Masters of Science degrees in Computer Engineering from Middle East Technical University. He also has a Master degree in IT Law from Hacettepe University. He is currently working on his PhD as well.

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.

Kübra Kültür

Kübra Kültür has received her B.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering from Middle East Technical University (METU) in 2008. She has been in Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) since then as an Avionics Software Developer, working in providing communication and managing of aircraft devices in the system. Modernization of Lockheed C-130 Hercules Military Cargo Airplanes and New Generation Basic Trainer (HÜRKUŞ) are projects she has been worked for.

Esin Özçelik

Esin is an Avionics Software Design Specialist with 10 years experience in avionic projects in defense industry. She has a strong background in safety critical systems, having worked deeply in development and verification of DO178-B Level A/B (Catastrophic/Hazardous) real time embedded software systems. She received her B.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering from Middle East Technical University (METU). She is currently working for Software-Hardware Management of Turkish Fighter Aircraft (TF-X) in Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI). She is an official member of Ankara Photography Artists Association (AFSAD).

Onur Bahçıvancılar

Onur Bahçıvancılar received his B.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering and his MBA degree from Bilkent University in 2006 and in 2011, respectively. During his MBA studies, his personal focus was on marketing, branding, globalization and entrepreneurship topics. Currently, he is working in ICterra as a Software Consultant and the Product Manager of “www.workit.biz”, which is an Enterprise Communication & Collaboration Platform. He also takes on the Product Owner role for various Web & Mobile Application projects and gives consultancy for business development and marketing activities in the company.

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.

Pınar Karagöz

Pinar Karagoz received her PhD. degree from Middle East Technical University, Computer Engineering Department, in 2003. She worked as a visiting researcher in State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook. Her research interests include data mining, web usage mining, social network analysis, information extraction from the web, semantic web services, web service discovery and composition. Dr. Karagoz has authored several publications in international journals and leading conferences. Some of her papers were published in journals such as IEEE TKDE, IEEE Industrial Informatics, ACM TWEB, Information Systems Journal, SIGMOD Record, Information Processing and Management, Knowledge and Information Systems and her research were presented and published in conferences including VLDB, CIKM, ASONAM, DAWAK, ICWS. In addition to nationally funded research projects, she took part in two international collaboration projects. Currently she serves in the management committee of the COST Action ENERGIC (European Network Exploring Research into Geospatial Information Crowdsourcing. She is the recipient of 2016 Best Paper Awards for IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics.

Cüneyt Mertayak

Cüneyt got BSc and MSc from METU Computer Engineering Department, in 2005 and 2007, respectively. Since 2005 he is in the domains related to research, software and entrepreneurship. A couple highlights: * Research assistant and software engineering 2005-2009, main focus on object recognition in RGB images and in radar images * Entrepreneur 2009-2011, main focus: social network for gamers, fashion retail * Founding Engineer, then Engineering Management at Udemy 2011-2016, main focus: user side growth of the web product * Advisor for startups, 2012-2015, main focus: helping cofounders find product-market fit * Find me online: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cuneyt-mertayak-a00b9220, twitter.com/cmertayak

Erbil Karaman

Erbil co-founded early stage investment firm 500 Istanbul to help startups with global ambitions. He is also leading growth and product initiatives at Lyft. Before joining Lyft, Erbil worked at Facebook for 5 years leading strategic global initiatives.

Mehmet Ozan Kabak

Dr. Mehmet Ozan Kabak received his B.Sc. degrees in Electrical and Electronics Engineering and Computer Engineering from Middle East Technical University (METU), Ankara, Turkey, in 2008. He then received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, USA, in 2010 and 2015 respectively. He has worked in various Silicon Valley start-ups (Striim, Optumsoft) and also once co-founded a start-up of his own (Stringer Labs). He is primarily interested in Machine Learning, Distributed Systems and Predictive Analytics; particularly their applications in the Internet-of-Things domain.

Çağla Çığ 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 worked towards her Ph.D. degree on gaze-based activity prediction and gaze-based behavioral biometrics. Currently, she is a research engineer at Huawei Turkey R&D Center where she applies her expertise on machine learning, predictive analytics, and human-computer interaction to industry challenges related to domains including, but not limited to, search engines, social media analysis, and big data.

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.

Siyamed Sınır

Graduated from METU-CENG in 2003. Worked at SRDC, SpeedDate and Wanelo. Founded Karniyarik.com. Currently working on Android Text at Google. Calls himself a Padawan, lives in San Francisco. Enjoys movies, music, physics, philosophy and those little sparks in the amygdala. Admires German cars, Japanese etiquette, Soviet marches and Spanish siestas.

Fatih Orhan

Fatih directs cyber-intelligence and malware analysis research at Comodo. He also heads Comodo’s renowned Antispam Lab (ASLab) research team. Fatih brings over 15 years of experience in the management and technology industry to Comodo, responsible for cyber-intelligence and malware analysis research at Comodo, among additional R&D activities. Fatih received his undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering and masters of Science in Informatics from Middle East Technical University. He is currently working on his PhD as well.

Burçin Sapaz

Burcin Sapaz received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Computer Engineering from Middle East Technical University (METU) in 2005 and 2008 respectively. Between 2005 and 2009, he worked as a teaching and research assistant at METU Computer Engineering Department where he studied computer graphics (specifically computer animation and simulation) and algorithms (specifically genetic algorithms). Although he worked for several years in the defense industry, participating in many projects ranging from military simulations to satellite ground control software, he mostly worked as an R&D engineer at Siemens where he worked for Building Technologies, Factory Automation and Energy Management divisions.

Cem Nuri Aldaş

Cem Nuri ALDAŞ received her B.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering from Hacettepe University in 1992. He worked for Greater Municipality of Ankara (1992-1994) and Bilişim Ltd. (1995-1997) as a software engineer. In 1998; he was one of the founders of Dizge Electronics and Information Technologies and managed many software projects. Since 2003; he is the CEO of GCA Software Ltd. and still participates in software projects as an analyst, designer and project manager. In 2008; he received his M.Sc. degree in Medical Informatics branch of METU Informatics Institute. His interest areas are; software management, medical information systems, fraud detection, big data management and business intelligence. Since 2016; he is the accountant member of the Directors’ Board of Chamber of Computer Engineers.