The project which Burcu Saner Okan, faculty member of Sabancı University Integrated Manufacturing Technologies Research and Application Center (SU IMC), coordinates and has submitted in collaboration with Arçelik has been found worthy of support in the framework of the TÜBİTAK 1505 University-Industry Cooperation Support Program.
Burcu Saner Okan’s project is entitled “Development of hybrid-reinforced thermoplastic compound formulations through graphene made of waste plastic for the white goods sector, and cost-effective and lightened prototyping.” The project will last two years and aims to integrate recycled graphene made of waste plastic with thermoplastic composites, and its adaptation to serial production and scaling for use in the white goods sector.
Graphene from waste plastic will be provided by the Nanografen company, a Sabancı University spin-off, of which Burcu Saner Okan is a founding partner. The project is coordinated by Burcu Saner Okan, faculty member of SU IMC, and supported by Gülayşe Şahin, a TÜBİTAK 2244 scholar, Mustafa Sezer, R&D manager, and Dr Orkun Kaymakçı, technology team leader of the client company, Arçelik.
Mentioning the importance and details of the project, Burcu Saner Okan said, “So far, graphene has been used in specific and high-cost fields and projects such as medicine, sensors, batteries, supercapacitors and foldable touch screens. The fact that graphene is costly and cannot be distributed homogenously in polymer processing constitutes a barrier to its commercialization in commodity products in the plastics sector. In the scope of this project, graphene produced by Nanografen at low cost and in a sustainable way from waste plastic will decrease the amount of filling materials in plastics used in the white goods sector, lower the weight of parts and shorten the cycle period. At the end of the project, graphene will be converted into a commercial product and used in engineered plastics that are very commonly used in the white goods sector.”
The summer school will have the theme "Learning in Networks and Beyond Performance", and cover developments in the field of learning in networks, in addition to ethics, accountability and prejudice regarding artificial learning algorithms. The main speakers of the event will be Professor Yanjun Qi from Virginia University and Professor Karsten Borgwardt of ETH.
The event will be mostly in Turkish with some presentations in English. Please click here to learn more about the Artificial Learning Summer School and to register.
Sabancı University ranked in the band of 541stto 550thin the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings, one of the world's most prestigious university rankings.
The London-based higher education ranking institution QS has announced its “World University Rankings 2022”. Sabancı University ranked in the band of 541st to 550th in the QS World University Rankings, one of the world's most prestigious university rankings. The number of Turkish universities in the rankings is 21. As in the last year, Sabancı University ranked 2nd among the top Turkish universities.
The top three universities in the world are Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US), Oxford University (UK) and Stanford University (US).
In 2022, QS evaluated 1,673 universities and included 1,300 of them in the rankings. The evaluation is based on six indicators, namely academic reputation (40%), employer reputation (10%), faculty/students ratio (20%), citations per faculty (20%), international faculty ratio (5%), and international students ratio (5%).
The solo exhibition of Murat Germen, member of Sabancı University Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS), is now at YapıKredi Bomontiada and Artcrowdistanbul Online Gallery. Cue Art Space is being inaugurated with Murat Germen’s exhibition at Yapı Kredi Bomontiada. Opened on May 17, the exhibition entitled “Folktale” can be visited at YapıKredi Bomontiada until June 6, and at Artcrowdistanbul Online Gallery until August 30.
The 20 works in the exhibition co-organized with Artcrowdistanbul Online Gallery can be viewed on the digital platform of artcrowdistanbul.com. The 10 works that can be visited at Bomontiada are single edition works that the artist manually intervened in. Some works at the exhibition can be acquired in NFT form in addition to the traditional physical editions. These special editions are the first works of Murat Germen in NFT format on Blockchain.
Murat Germen, member of FASS, is an artist who has been deeply involved in digital processes for 40 years, since his high school years. A graduate student at MIT at a time when analogue creation techniques started to transform into their digital equivalents, Murat Germen witnessed and had the opportunity to internalize this process in an institution laying the foundations of this transformation. Monitoring later developments about the digitization of photography, Germen made experiments about how what software could and could not do impacted the process of creation. At the same time, he worked on various scientific articles for printed materials and conferences due to his role as a full-time faculty member at Sabancı University.
Two such works, namely “Inadvertent - Ars Accidentalis” and “Aesthetics of Serendipity: Muta-morphosis” came to the forefront as theoretical studies as to when, how and on what occasion concepts such as chance, accident and fortune were involved in various stages of artistic creation in a digital environment. Continuing his theoretical studies by focusing on his own practice as much as possible, Germen thus aimed to establish a healthy relation between theory and practice. During these studies, “Ars Accidentalis” (Latin for “accidental art”) came as the first series of Murat Germen’s entry into the art sphere in Turkey in 2008. Following this series, the “Muta-morphosis” series came in 2009 and became one of the most remembered works of the artist about over-urbanization. Born out of an unexpectedly bad result and the accidental discovery of the “content-aware scaling” command in Photoshop, this series aimed to push the limits of the algorithm and describe fractures of imperfect, broken visualities arising from urban concentration.
In his “Folktale” exhibition, which will be simultaneously opened virtually/physically at Bomontiada and artcrowdistanbul.com online gallery in cooperation with Cue Art Space, Germen once again benefits from a haphazard digital transformation process. The photogrammetric 3D modelling method was used in the works, which were produced in 2019. While this method is usually preferred for photorealistic space documentation and virtual tours, the artist deliberately went to the “roughest” levels with his parametric preferences to decrease the fidelity as much as possible in the process of transforming a photo to a 3D model. The resulting, unexpectedly abstract visualities and the disengagement from realistic concreteness imply that the content that is transmitted through mainstream media as being objective is basically lacking, subjective, and biased, and that what is told is not the reality but today’s folktales.
Murat Germen ‘Folktale’ exhibition
May 17 – June 6 / Cue Art Space Venue: YapıKredi Bomontiada
May 17 - August 30 / Artcrowdistanbul Online Gallery
Recent developments in the Sea of Marmara were covered in the webinar entitled “What’s happening in the Sea of Marmara? Pollution, Warming and the Mucilage Problem”, organized in the scope of “Pandemic and Society” webinar series started by Sabancı University Istanbul Policy Center (IPC). The participants warned that the devastation in the Sea of Marmara was the death of an inland sea and such environmental disasters could cause further unexpected pandemics.
A webinar entitled “What’s happening in the Sea of Marmara? Pollution, Warming and the Mucilage Problem” was organized in the scope of the “Pandemic and Society” webinar series started by Sabancı University Istanbul Policy Center (IPM). Moderated by Senem Aydın Düzgit, IPC Research and Academic Relations Coordinator, the webinar hosted Levent Artüz, Leader of the MAREM (Monitoring Changing Oceanographic Conditions in the Sea of Marmara) project implemented by the Sevinç-Erdal İnönü Foundation and Ümit Şahin, IPC Climate Change Studies Coordinator, as speakers. The recent developments in the Sea of Marmara were discussed in the webinar.
“We are witnessing the death of the Sea of Marmara,” said Senem Aydın Düzgit, “The reasons for what is happening are global warming to some extent, but human mismanagement, errors or intentional policies to a much greater extent”.
MAREM Project Leader Levent Artüz highlighted that the current situation in the Sea of Marmara was attributable to some wrong projects started in the 1980s, and the acceleration of the negative trend, particularly after the 2000s. Levent Artüz said the following about the issue: “In the scope of the project of cleaning the Golden Horn in 1989, undercurrents were used as conveyor bands to transport polluted water to the Black Sea without any purification or transmission projects. However, it was known that only 10% of the undercurrents moved to the Black Sea. It was known that that method would not work, but people insisted on it. What happened next? We saw fish die in 1989. We lost all the marine species in that period. The literature wrote about this event as drowning of fish. A major massacre occurred in the Sea of Marmara. Biodiversity disappeared. From the 1990s, jellyfish started to accumulate to build tiny islands. Fish species like swordfish and tunny, which had considerable economic value and were important for the ecosystem, disappeared. Other fish species shrank in size. The Sea of Marmara became turbid due to discharged wastewater. The effect of global warming in the Black Sea was 1 degree, while it was 2.5 to 3 degrees in Marmara, which continues to get warmer.”
Saying that there was a similar case of mucilage in 2007, Levent Artüz revealed that “It was a bit different at that time, but it did not attract that much attention since it did not become that widespread. From 2011, we started to see invasive species. In 2017, Marmara ranked second in the world for microplastic pollution. And in 2021, we have what we can see today.”
Levent Artüz emphasized that it was a disaster waiting to happen, and he continued, “In the first phase in 1989, biodiversity eroded. In the second phase of the pollution, some existing species grew exponentially while some others tended to disappear, and that was because of changes in the competition conditions. Some species just found a way out, became extremely abundant in a short period of time, and then faced extinction. When species died, their intracellular liquids spread to the marine environment. Due to difference of density, some liquids floated on water while some others sank deeper into the sea by taking the solid waste around them. We can encounter mucilage even 1,272 meters under the sea surface.”
IPC Climate Change Studies Coordinator Ümit Şahin said that the problem had come to the agenda in the course of the last month, although scientists had made continued warnings about it for many years, and the Ministry of Environment took action only one week ago. He continued, “When environmental problems reach a level visible to the eye and are covered in social media, authorities notice that there is an emergency. I think this is the biggest problem. If there had been no such images of the catastrophe, and showing that even the bottom of the Marmara Sea had been covered by mucilage, nothing would have been done. This case shows that we do not approach environmental problems in the absence of striking images and uproar over an emergency, and that the government is in no hurry to take any action.”
Underlining that the climate change was human-driven, Ümit Şahin said the following, “We view the environmental destruction in the Sea of Marmara from our own perspective, which is confined to our complaints like ‘we cannot swim in the sea, it smells, creates visual pollution, we cannot eat any fish’. However, there has been a serious ecological devastation for the last 40 years. All the marine species are becoming extinct, but we try to solve the problem when it becomes most challenging as we do not respect nature’s and the ecosystem’s right to life. Turning the atmosphere into a waste bin with greenhouse gases is the same thing as turning the Marmara Sea into a garbage dump with industrial and household waste. If we had not turned Marmara into a dumping ground, it would have been much less probable for this problem to happen, even despite the warming of the seas. Although global warming triggers this event, the main source of this specific problem is human factors.”
Sharing his evaluation of the Action Plan announced by the Ministry of Environment, Ümit Şahin said, “It is important that the Sea of Marmara has been declared a protected area, but it is not known how this can be achieved, how much financing will be needed, or for how long Marmara will remain a protected area. The expected population growth to accompany the Istanbul Canal will only worsen the pollution.” About the Action Plan, Levent Artüz said it was important that for the first time there was a consensus on the fact that Marmara was polluted, and that it was essential to make regulatory arrangements about the protected area status of the Sea of Marmara urgently. Artüz said, “The Sea of Marmara died in 1989. We have to learn lessons from that, and give up similar projects.”
A video recording of Pandemic and Society - "What’s happening in the Sea of Marmara? Pollution, Warming and the Mucilage Problem" webinar is available on the IPC’s YouTube channel, and you can find the related link below.
Sabancı University Istanbul International Energy and Climate Center (IICEC) Director Bora Şekip Güray shared his assessments of the recent developments about natural gas reserves.Güray said he expected the 540 billion cubic meters of natural gas reserves discovered as a result of explorations recently intensifying in the Black Sea to provide multi-dimensional benefits to the sustainable growth of the energy sector in Turkey.
Calling the developments in the field of natural gas positive, Sabancı University Istanbul International Energy and Climate Center (IICEC) Director Bora Şekip Güray said, “Steps that can enable Turkey to cater for its natural gas needs, for 99% of which Turkey is dependent on imports, through its own production will help decrease the share of energy imports in total energy consumption, which is currently above 70% for primary energy sources, and lower the nearly 30-billion USD energy imports bill, a figure that could have been much higher had it not been for the pandemic and the accompanying shrinkage of demand.”
Turkey to have a stronger hand
Highlighting that the recent discoveries were important also from the perspective of energy security and technology-focused development, and would make Turkey’s hand stronger in negotiations for gas imports, Güray said, “It is important to evaluate these developments in such a way that they can contribute to efforts towards the competitive development and deepening of the natural gas market, long-awaited items that have come to the agenda this year”.
Güray pointed out that natural gas had the potential to be used more commonly in residential and other buildings in an integrated way with energy efficiency improvements, in transport in line with mobility and urbanization trends, and in some industries, and added that, considering prospective growth trends in these sectors in the short and medium term, natural gas would remain important for Turkey’s plans for a cleaner energy perspective. Güray also pointed out the role of a reliable, efficient and competitive natural gas economy as a tool to support more renewable energy-based growth as the main axis of energy generation, and also a more competitive and predictable energy market.
The Sustainable Stories Webinar Series, organized in the scope of the Global Hope Festival and started with the mission to raise awareness about sustainability, continued with the webinar entitled “Carbon-Neutral Future”. In the second part of the webinar, Sabancı University Corporate Governance Forum - CDP Turkey Projects ManagerMirhan Köroğlu Göğüş and Sabancı University Istanbul International Center for Energy and Climate (IICEC) DirectorBora Şekip Güray took part as speakers.
Sharing his opinions during the webinar, realized under the leadership of Turkuvaz Media Group and the new economy magazine, InBusiness, Mirhan Köroğlu Göğüş drew attention to the approaches of companies to climate change. Stating that they had formed CDP Turkey under the umbrella of Sabancı University Corporate Governance Forum since 2010, Göğüş said, “We can see that companies are becoming more aware not only of the climate change but also water management. Especially for the last 10 years, companies have had to adopt a different approach. For those companies that realized this transformation quickly, climate change became an opportunity, not a crisis”.
Companies continue their CDP disclosures despite Covid-19
Pointing to the increase in the number of companies responding to the CDP’s calls, Göğüş continued, “We can see that the respondents from Turkey continue to disclose their environmental impact to their investors and stakeholders through the CDP in a transparent way. They also enhanced the quality of disclosures and started to set long-term targets. There are considerable performance differences among companies that do and do not respond to the CDP’s calls. We have seen that, despite the Covid-19 pandemic, companies continued their CDP disclosures in Turkey and in the world. 9,600 companies in the world made CDP disclosures and 60 companies in Turkey responded to CDP disclosures.
Speaking at the webinar, IICEC Director Bora Şekip Güray made assessments about what kind of opportunities Turkey could create in the field of energy and what kind of path should be drawn for a mostly clean energy future. Güray talked about secure and clean energy-focused findings and the recommendations of the Turkey Energy Outlook study, the modelling infrastructure and scenario analysis of which were realized by IICEC. He added that, according to the study, energy-driven total emissions could reach a peak before 2040 that, in terms of carbon intensity, a one-third reduction on the last year’s figure could be achieved by 2040, and that technological developments and growing awareness about clean energy promised much more than these developments.
Turkey has very important clean energy potential
Providing information about what the roadmap should be for a cleaner energy future and underlining the importance of electric vehicles, hydrogen and other technologies aimed at decreasing carbon intensity and energy efficiency, Güray continued, “As we all know, an element that distinguishes us from Western countries is that we are an emerging energy economy. Energy demand has the potential to grow. Although this situation presents challenges for energy transformation, it is also an opportunity. Turkey has very important clean energy potential. Turkey’s energy consumption per capita is half that of developed countries. Especially, electrification is a very important trend in Turkey. The future of energy will be shaped around electrification”.
Leaders of the business world continue to share their knowledge and experience with Sabancı University students and alumni. M. Cem Açık, Pfizer Turkey CEO, Onur Dedeköylü, Pegasus Airlines Marketing Director, Özge Akçizmeci Üstün, YouGov Turkey General Manager, and Tankut Turnaoğlu, P&G Turkey, Caucasus and Central Asia Vice President, will be the guests at the “Leader Meetings”.
The Leader Meetings events, organized by Sabancı Business School for more than 10 years, continue with the participation of leading figures of the business world. The new speakers of the Leader Meetings, at which more than 40 senior managers and leaders from different fields have shared their knowledge and experiences so far, to be held between June and October, include M. Cem Açık, Pfizer Turkey CEO, Onur Dedeköylü, Pegasus Airlines Marketing Director, Özge Akçizmeci Üstün, YouGov Turkey General Manager, and Tankut Turnaoğlu, P&G Turkey, Caucasus and Central Asia Vice President.
During the meetings to be held from June to October, 2021, M. Cem Açık, Pfizer Turkey CEO, will talk about “Business Continuity: Crisis Management during the Pandemic”, Onur Dedeköylü, Pegasus Airlines Marketing Director about “Post-COVID Digital Transformation and Opportunities: Flight and Travel Habits”, Özge Akçizmeci Üstün, YouGov Turkey General Manager about “The Story of a Sabancı University Graduate Entrepreneur: YouGov's Wizsight Takeover”, and Tankut Turnaoğlu, P&G Turkey, Caucasus and Central Asia Vice President about “Communication and Brand Strategy in the COVID World”.
Students and alumni will have the opportunity to listen to business strategies from prominent business leaders in their respective fields during the meetings, which will be held online. Based on the philosophy of improving knowledge and contributing to social progress, in addition to supporting education through teaching and extracurricular activities, Sabancı University holds events every month considering the preferences of students and alumni. Valuable leaders of the business world who participate in the Leader Meetings share their knowledge and experience as well as their stories, strategies, and visions for the future with students and graduates to ensure the dissemination of knowledge.
“Leader Meetings”, a special series of the Sabancı Business School, will continue throughout the year. You can follow the developments on sbs.sabanciuniv.edu/tr/lider-bulusmalari.
In the Raith Micrograph Award 2021 Special edition competition organized by Raith company with international participation; The fabrication 'Full Electrostatic Control of Nanomechanical Buckling Device' with the collaboration between Bilkent UNAM(Supervised by Dr. Mehmet Selim Hanay) and Sabancı University Nanotechnology Research and Application Center (SUNUM)in which significant nanofabrication processes were carried out by SUNUM Nanofabrication Team Leader Dr. Cenk YANIK, was selected 2nd by the committee.
Another collaborative work 'Doubly-clamped beam NEMS device' in which Dr. Cenk YANIK made critical contributions to the nanofabrication production process, was also awarded as “Honorable Mentioned".
It is very proud and hopeful that there are two distinguished institutions from Turkey in the competition where participants from many countries took place.
We congratulate Dr. Cenk YANIK for his outstanding contributions and wish him continued success.
The project coordinated by Nihal Öztolan Erol, a post-doc researcher at Sabancı University Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences (FENS) will receive support in the scope of TÜBİTAK 1002 Quick Support Program.
Nihal Öztolan Erol’s project is entitled “Researching genes developing nitrogen use efficiency in arabidopsis thaliana.” The project aims to eliminate the damage done to nature by nitrogen fertilizers.
The project will last 1 year. Mark GM Aarts and Maarten Koornneef from Wageningen University and Selim Çetiner from Sabancı University will provide advisory support for the project.
Mentioning the importance and details of the project, Nihal Öztolan said, “Nitrogen is one of the essential macro elements for plants. Plants get nitrogen from the soil through their roots thanks to nitrogen-stabilizing microorganisms and distribute it to all their organs. Plans growing in soils with sufficient quantity of nitrogen develop, reproduce and complete their lifecycles in a healthy way. However, it is not the case for soils lacking in nitrogen, where plant development and productivity are seriously challenged. To overcome this situation, nitrogen fertilizers are used. However, the damage done to nature by nitrogen fertilizers ranges from the pollution of underground water to the death of seas and deterioration of the nitrogen cycle. To eliminate all these negative effects, it is very important to enhance nitrogen use efficiency in plants. The way to enhance nitrogen use efficiency in plants is to obtain plants that can develop and reproduce in low-nitrogen soils in a healthy way. Implemented in Sabancı University FENS Molecular Biology, Genetics and Bioengineering program, this project will help eliminate the damage of nitrogen fertilizers to nature and constitute one of the essential scientific studies aimed at enhancing nitrogen use efficiency in plants.”
