BAŞAK ESİN KÖKTÜRK GÜZEL
Assistant Professor at Izmir Demokrasi University, Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering

Among the universities I visited with a plan on my mind to study engineering during the university admission period, I had the opportunity to meet every faculty member who informed me about the department and IZTECH with sincerity , and this moved me to prefer this university which at the time had no specified minimum admission score.
I’m proud to be one of the first students of IZTECH Electronics and Communication Engineering Department which started to admit undergraduate students in 2004. For me, to be a graduate of IZTECH doesn’t only mean graduating from a good university, but also it means to have a second family. Maybe just because of this, I could not leave IZTECH after my undergraduate education and then I got my master’s and Ph.D. degrees from IZTECH Electronics and Communication Engineering in 2012 and 2017, respectively.
I think that among the most precious values that IZTECH students develop are to know the ways to access knowledge and to have a broader perspective. I believe that this education approach of IZTECH is the greatest reason why IZTECH graduates have become in high demand in the national and international areas in such a short time.
In order to transfer the education and discipline that I have gained from my professors who are very valuable in terms of both academically and personally, I am now working as an Assistant Professor at Izmir Demokrasi University, Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering.

NİYAZİ TOKER, Embedded System Engineer at Red Pine Software

I’m currently working as an Embedded System Engineer at Red Pine Software. I have started the ECE program, thinking that my only passion lays in the field of electronics, however, my research interests have evolved during the program as I have taken several courses and got involved in projects that helped me to explore the intersections of hardware and software systems. My most current projects focused on application of embedded systems as robotics and bio-instrumentation.

Can you explain the projects you had a chance to work on?

As a part of my job, I’m working on several projects in the field of automotive. As an undergraduate at IZTECH, I had the opportunity to collaborate with Dr. Abdurrahman Gümüş on one of my graduation projects called “Controlling Pinball Game with EMG Signals and Displaying EMG Signals on Smartphone. This project is a physiotherapy game and aims to help people with muscle weakness to strengthen their muscles by controlling the game. My other graduation project is “Image Processing Based Autonomous Chess Playing Robot” with Prof. Enver Tatlıcıoğlu. This chess playing robot is an image processing based machine that is developed in response to the need of an alternative way of teaching children to play chess.
I have also been involved in team projects during the program. “Ladybug” project I collaborated with IZTECH students from different disciplines is one of my biggest accomplishments at IZTECH. Our Project represented Turkey at 2016 Microsoft Imagine Cup at Seattle, USA. Ladybug is an educational robot that aims to help 4 to 6-age children to develop an algorithm and reach to the given target step by step.

Why did you choose IZTECH?

I chose IZTECH for its academic success, English-medium instruction and student societies. I was aware that IZTECH alumnus qualify for prestigious positions because the education we receive here equips us with a solid background in engineering and offers various opportunities for innovation. Also, English-medium instruction makes our graduates more appealing candidates for both local and global market. Student societies such as IEEE provides a dynamic environment where we can generate and apply our innovative ideas.

What other activities are you involved with on campus?

I was involved in IEEE throughout my undergraduate. I joined IEEE as a freshman and since then I had participated in several technical workshops, organized national robotic events such as IZTECH RoboLeague as a Technical Coordinator. As a senior, I gave workshops on basic embedded programming to society members. These activities enabled me to improve my communication and managerial skills and I excelled in troubleshooting.

What are your career plans?

I plan to gain more experience as an Embedded System Engineer. In the meanwhile, I also want to continue exploring the field of computer science in a graduate program. What guides my current and future work is my passion to make positive impact on the lives of people in my country and in the world.

AYLİN BAYRAM, Aselsan

Engineering is about bringing creative solutions to problems and to present innovative ideas. Electronics and communication are areas that host innovative ideas. I knew that high-quality engineering education is given at Izmir Institute of Technology since it is a technical university. As I progressed in becoming an Electronics and Communication Engineer, I was even more convinced that I made the right decision for myself. In strengthening this belief, the efforts of our department teachers who do not spare their help from us are very great.Achieving success cannot be achieved without effort. One needs to love him/her department or job to work on that job. We have to make the right choices in order to do our job for a lifetime.Since I wanted this department, I got used to this university even though I was not familiar with. The fact that the language of instruction was English and that almost all of our teachers worked abroad made me even more comfortable.

MUHAMMED ÇOBANLAR, Turkcell

When I graduated as the top student in 2010, I’ve been working as a part-time for 6 months in the largest companies of GSM sector in Turkey. Then with my graduation, full-time recruitment process has been finalized.As soon as I graduated, I started my master’s degree in the same department and at the end of 2013, I gave my thesis and graduated for the second time from IZTECH. I have completed my 4th year in my business life that I started when I was a student. Neither in METU in Ankara, which is a muffled and gray city, nor in ITU in Istanbul, where it is impossible to live from its crowd, I would prefer to study in IZTECH, which has the same education quality with the mentioned institutions, in my dorm room with sea view and in the quiet Izmir and even quieter Urla.