I graduated summa cum laude from CENG, METU, with my BS degree in 1999 (ranking 1st in my department and ranking 2nd in my class, with a GPA of 3.99 out of 4.00). Then, I got accepted into EECS, MIT, for my graduate studies in the field of AI as a student member of CSAIL (then Artificial Intelligence Laboratory) under the supervision of Leslie Pack Kaelbling and Tomás Lozano-Pérez. I received my MS and PhD degrees in CS from MIT in 2001 and 2011, respectively. To the best of my knowledge, since the late 1990s (or possibly even before then), I am the only Turkish student with a BS degree in CS obtained from a Turkish university to be accepted into MIT for graduate studies at EECS. Also, I am one of just 3 or 4 Turkish scientists holding a PhD in CS from MIT, and one of just 16 faculty members in Turkey with a PhD in engineering from MIT.
My research interests have been in artificial intelligence, robotics, autonomous systems, dynamic collision avoidance for unmanned vehicles, simulation systems, and lately, in developing machine learning and data mining techniques for agricultural use and algorithmic trading. Aside from being an enthusiastic academician, a successful instructor, and a role model for my students, I am also a prolific software developer, a creative thinker, and a life-long student of various branches of CS.