Sabancı University invited parents to the sixth annual “Family and Education Day.”  Families learned more about a wide range of topics from science to entrepreneurship, energy, and politics.

Sabancı University “Family and Education Day” took place at the Sabancı University campus in Tuzla on Saturday, October 22, 2016. The traditional Family and Education Day event started at the Sabancı University Performing Arts Center with introductory remarks by Acting President Ayşe Kadıoğlu.

The first presentation on the Family and Education Day was made by Batu Erman from the Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences. Batu Erman's lecture was titled “Drug Design and Production in Nanolabs”.

This was followed by Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences member Ali Koşar on “SU Pistol and Cancer Treatment."

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences member Çağla Aydın spoke on “Language, Memory and Psychology”.

Finally, School of Management Acting Dean Füsun Ülengin gave a lecture titled “The Impact of Transport Restrictions in Europe on the Turkish Economy".

Parents were accompanied by Sabancı University faculty members during lunch, where they found the opportunity to ask questions. The afternoon session included tours of the Information Center and SUNUM, and Faculty Programs.

Parents received general information about the Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences from Assistant Dean Cem Güneri; the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences from Assistant Dean Özgür Kıbrıs, the School of Management from Assistant Dean Burçin Bozkaya, and the School of Languages from Program Coordinator Nurdan Çoksezen Metel.

2015-2016 Lecture Awards given

The Foundations Development Year Instructor Awards category had İlkem Kayıcan in first place, Adam John Simpson in second and Andrew Bosson in third.

Contribution to First Year University Courses – Class Lectures category awards went to Brian Rodrigues in first place, Meltem Naime Bizim in second place, and Ali Nihat Eken in third place.

Contribution to First Year University Courses – Hall Lectures category awards went to Hülya Canbakal, Emrah Kalemci and Cemil Koçak in first, second and third places, respectively.

Graduates of the Year award winners chosen with the votes of senior year undergraduate students were Cem Güneri, Ali Rana Atılgan, and Kemal Kılıç.

In the First Year Teaching Assistant awards category, Aysu Yurduşen was first, Abba Ibrahim Ramadan second and Onur Çatmabacak third.

In the Teaching Assistant Awards category for courses other than first-year university courses, first prize went to Ronay Çetin, second prize to Yunus Akkoç, and third prize to Abdul Ghani.

Winners received their awards from Acting President Ayşe Kadıoğlu, FENS Assistant Dean Cem Güneri, FASS Assistant Dean Özgür Kıbrıs, SoM Acting Dean Füsun Ülengin, and School of Languages Director Jacqueline Einer.

Mini concert by Müzikus
The Family and Education Day concluded with a mini concert by Sabancı University music club Müzikus.

Hello Tomorrow and Sabancı Üniversitesi Istanbul International Center for Energy and Climate (IICEC) will hold an event “The Future of Energy” on Monday, October 31^st 2016, at the Sabancı Center.

The high-level event will host leading innovators, science-entrepreneurs, corporate executives, investors and industry experts.

Renewable energy Technologies, energy efficiency, smart grids, the internet of things (IoT), connected devices, demand-oriented management systems (DSR) and energy storage systems will be examined in detail.

The program will start with the keynote speeches of HE Charles Fries, the French Ambassador to Ankara; Cansen Başaran-Symes, Chairperson of TÜSİAD; Dr. Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency and Steering Committee Honorary Chairman of IICEC. The panel “Creating new synergies between science-entrepreneurs & industry leaders” under the moderation of Murat Özyeğin, president of Fiba Gorup, will follow. The event will continue with the special presentation of Faruk Eczacıbaşı, chairman of Turkish Informatics Foundation.

The second panel will examine the topic of creating a high-impact science-entrepreneurship ecosystem in Turkey. With the moderator Emre Kurttepeli, Alp Saul, CEO of Pronet; Aytül Ercil, CEO of Vispera; Cenk Bayrakdar, Managing Director of Revo Capital; Doğan Taşkent from European Investment Forum will participate in this discussiıon.

This event is supported by TEB, Boston Consulting Group, Bloomberg and technology development centers of top universities.

Date    : October 31, 2016, Monday

Time   : 08:30 – 16:30

Location: Sabancı Center, 4. Levent

“Gravitational Wave Detectors: The Ultimate Windows on the Universe"

Telescopes give us information about astronomical events – motions of planets, pulsars, black holes, supernovae, the Big Bang – by picking up photons or neutrinos generated by such distant sources a long time ago. These standard “messenger particles” have serious shortcomings: They can be blocked by obstacles (the atmosphere, for example); furthermore, they tell us nothing about faraway objects that do not produce neutrinos or photons. Unfortunately, about 95% of the matter-energy in the universe falls into that category. Nevertheless, even dark matter or energy can be detected by gravitational waves, which they cannot avoid emitting. Such waves are very hard to observe (a great disadvantage), but cannot be blocked by anything (a great advantage). Thus in principle we should be able to study Dark Matter, and also peek all the way into the Big Bang that happened 13.8 Billion years ago. Physicists are learning to detect these exceedingly weak signals by new gravitational wave detectors, which can be thought of as gravitational telescopes. The detector LIGO has already caught the waves from black hole mergers, while others like LISA, are in the advanced design stage.

Electronic Engineering 2009 graduate Rabia Tuğçe Yazıcıgil received a dissertation award from Columbia University for her dissertation “Compressive Sampling as an Enabling Solution for Energy-Efficient and Rapid Wideband RF Spectrum Sensing in Emerging Cognitive Radio Systems”.

Rabia Tuğçe Yazıcıgil was one of the 23 entrants to the 2015 MIT Rising Stars academic career workshop chosen to make a presentation on her dissertation among 60 woman scientists.

Rabia Tuğçe is currently a postdoctoral research associate in MIT's EECS department, and works on “Ultra-low-power transceivers for the Internet of Things”.

Photo: Rabia Tuğçe receiving her Bell Labs Prize with “Enabling Cognitive Radio Systems with Compressed-Sampling Rapid Spectrum Sensors” , April 2015

Photo: Rabia Tuğçe’s presentation and demo at the IEEE ISSCC 2015, the most prestigious conference in electronic circuit design, was used as the cover photo in ISSCC 2016.

TİM and İnovent start a mentorship project for sustainable value

Sabancı University affiliate Inovent and the Turkish Exporters' Assembly (TİM) kick off INOSUIT - Innovation-Focused Mentorship Project, to help companies create sustainable value and increase their exports. The academic directors of the project are Inovent Director Merih Pasin and Sabancı University FENS faculty member Umut Ekmekçi.

During the first year of the project, roadmaps will be drawn for 100 companies whose progress will then be monitored.  TİM Board of Directors Member Ömer Burhanoğlu said, “We will have great success stories by companies as they advance towards their 2023 objectives."

Sabancı University affiliate Inovent and the Turkish Exporters' Assembly (TİM) kicked off INOSUIT - Innovation-Focused Mentorship Project. The project is designed to help companies create sustainable value through maintaining their innovation performance, and increase their exports.  The academic directors of the project are Inovent Director Merih Pasin and Sabancı University FENS faculty member Umut Ekmekçi. The project started with two-day workshops and will continue for the first year with providing easier access to strategic resources for 100 companies, shaping their innovation roadmaps according to the latest technological trends. Invited to the workshops were 62 mentors from the top 50 universities in the 2015 Most Entrepreneurial and Innovative Universities Index compiled by the Ministry of Science, Industry and Technology. These mentors will be assigned to the 100 companies included in the project to provide them innovation-focused mentorship support over 11 months. The number of participating companies is expected to increase in subsequent years.

Easier access to strategic resources

The systematics of Innovation Management will be formulated as the top priority in the project in order to improve the innovation competencies and capacities of the participants through a common language created by the mentors. During the first year, the project will provide easier access to strategic resources for 100 companies, shaping their innovation roadmaps according to the latest technological trends. Best practices and experiences will be shared during the 6th month of the 11-month project, and the conclusion will include actual success stories of the participants.

News coverage of the project is available here.

Sabancı University Executive Development Unit – EDU starts trainings available to the general public in order to share the collective knowledge and experience with wider audiences and provide reliable support to professionals who believe in continuous development.

Facilitators of the public programs will include Sabancı University faculty members as well as academic and professional subject matter experts with an excellent grasp of current trends. The initiative aims to create an effective learning platform for translating knowledge to practical business processes by bringing participants together with experts of their respective fields. Supplementary tools include case studies, preparation, assignments, forums, simulations, groupwork and roleplaying in order to reinforce learnings.

The program will begin on November 5 and 6, 2016 with Sabancı University School of Management faculty member Dr. Yusuf Soner’s module on “Systematic Selling”. This will be followed by Ömer Uzun’s “Business Leadership Development Program” between November 19, 2016 and March 18, 2017; Dr. Yusuf Soner and Dr. Aziz Murat Hatipağaoğlu's “A Strategic View of Exports: How to Use Government Incentives” on November 24-26, 2016; typology expert, trainer and author Ethem Kocabaş and Hece Özyaman's "Communication Intelligence" on November 25-27, 2016; Dr. Yusuf Soner, Game Solution Turkey Operations Manager Cenk Enhoş and Dr. Murat Buket’s “Holistic Operations Management and Financial Impact” between November 26 and December 11, 2016; Vongolo Consultancy founder and ‘Anticipate’ author Rob De Jong's “Visionary Leadership” on December 1-2, 2016; Sabancı University Executive Development Unit Marketing Programs Coordinator and Senior Development Specialist Pınar Elmasoğlu’s “Strategic Brand Management” on December 2-3, 2016; Sabancı University Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences member, Data Analytics Graduate Program Director and Center of Excellence for Data Analytics Co-Director H. Sait Ölmez’s “Data Analytics and 'Big Data' for Winning in Competition” on December 7, 2016; and Nyonrode University Strategic Leadership Professor and Nyonrode University Strategy Center Co-Director Professor Bob De Wit’s “Strategic Leadership” on January 17-18, 2017.

Trainings will take place at the Hilton ParkSA, Point Hotel Barbaros and Sicimoğlu Mansion in Istanbul. The “A Strategic View of Exports: How to Use Government Incentives” session will be held at the Anemon Hotel in Samsun.

Information and registration: http://edu.sabanciuniv.edu/tr/genel-katilima-acik-egitimler

Sabancı University Executive Development Unit – EDU started a new training program with its learning partner, Akçansa.

The launch meeting of the Akçansa Bosses Program took place on Wednesday, October 12, 2016. 16 Akçansa dealers will join the 4-month program. 

Akçansa's Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Önder Kırca, discussed the program. Önder Kırca said that as a business that had been the favorite company in the industry for 14 years, they needed to work with their stakeholders in order to increase the value that they had created. Kırca continued, “We believe that we are carrying Akçansa to the future by growing and developing in tandem with our business partners and dealers. The Akçansa Sales Academy is a project that we started for this purpose.  As our initial step in the program, we held the Future Leaders event to prepare the young representatives of our dealerships to become leaders in the future. The second leg of the initiative is the Bosses Program. A company that creates value must preserve it together with all of its stakeholders.

Also speaking at the event, Sabancı University Executive Development Unit – EDU Director Cüneyt Evirgen said, "It is imperative for bosses to step out of their companies, spend some time in training, and work to enlarge the value that they have created themselves." Emphasizing the Sabancı University mission "to create and develop together", Evirgen argued that knowledge and learning could be developed in tandem. Discussing the value that will be added by each stakeholder, Evirgen said, "The main benefit of the training will be answers to questions about how to develop the business and evolve into a corporate organization." Evirgen noted that Sabancı University was named the most entrepreneurial and innovative university by the Ministry of Science, Industry and Technology. Explaining that the index compiled by the Ministry includes the best universities in Turkey, Evirgen said that one of the criteria was university-industry partnership. Evirgen said that developed countries had excellent levels of cooperation between universities and the industry, and that the issue was a priority for Sabancı University as well. Evirgen stated that entrepreneurship and innovation would be recurring themes in the trainings. In explaining EDU's objective of transferring the latest knowledge generated within the university to the world of business, Cüneyt Evirgen said, "We view our training customers as learning partners. We learn together with them."

Sabancı University Executive Development Unit – EDU development partner and Akçansa Bosses Program Coordinator Rana Çakır provided information about the Bosses Program. The program consists of four two-day modules. The initial module in the program is called "Where should a boss stand in his business?" The titles of the subsequent modules are “People Management”, “Profitable Customer Relationships” and “Financial Asset Management”. Modules will be supported with seminars by subject matter experts.

Industrial Engineering 4th year student Bengüsu Özcan's second book Antika Adam was published by Pena Yayınları on September 6, 2016!

Antika Adam [Ancient Man] is the story of Koray, who is cryogenically preserved into the future as a responsible young man, and his ordeals in the new world where he finds himself. It is a gripping story of time travel gone awry.

Bengüsu Özcan said the following about her book: "I had been thinking about how some corporations can grow to be even stronger than governments, enticing students to become a part of them through interview techniques that were not unlike 'Hunger Games'. I also realized that I would eventually become entangled in this system regardless of how critical of it I am, and that it would evolve into something that would be considered natural, even approved of, by people in the future. Many 'developments' that are intrinsic to us to the extent that we don't question them at all, remain mysterious to the older generation, and they shy away from them. So I decided to write about how a person from my generation would adapt to the new world of an imaginary future after he travels in time. This is how my second book Antika Adam came to being.’’

About Antika Adam

If you were to take a break from life for 50 years, would you ride along with the change and adapt to your new world, or would you become embroiled in a quest for your distant past?

A story of time travel gone awry

"For reasons unknown, the universe expands continuously. As it expands we shrink; we are stuck in a corner of a solar system destined to expire among a million stars in each of a million galaxies that occupy a space no larger than the pupil of an eye, and we scream at the top of our lungs to lay a claim on everything else around us. Our faith that we can actually do this is what we get out of bed for day after day; if we were to lose that faith, what purpose would there be in breathing?"

All Koray remembered of the night before was fighting his illness when he woke up, reborn in a young and healthy body in the year 2079. He was the first human to travel into the future by cryogenic preservation. Yet, the world he finds himself in has a store of surprises for him.

Sabancı University Family and Education Day

Date: October 22, 2016, Saturday

Time: 10:00-16:00

Place: Sabancı Üniversitesi Gösteri Merkezi - Performing Art Center / Faculties

Dear Sabancı University Members, Alumni and Students

Our President, esteemed scientist Prof. Dr. Nihat Berker has resigned from his duties at his own request effective October 19th. We respect his decision and thank him for his contributions to our university. 

We also wish success in his career.

Prof. Dr. Ayse Kadioglu, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, who has been working with us since the first Search Conference, since the days of foundation of our university, has been appointed Acting President. 

We wish her succes in this task as well.

Sabancı University Board of Trustees