I received my bachelors degree in Civil Engineering from ODTU in 1997. I established the beginnings of some great friendships there. The four years that I spent in the ODTU dorms helped me become who I am right now. Sharing the small dorm room with six guys in bunk beds might sound excruciating to many (to me as well right now) yet it teaches so much about people and more importantly about yourself.
I used to visualize a lot during those four years. I used to go to the stadium stands nearby and sit at the empty seats at night and just think about the future. I always imagined going abroad for my master’s degree – even though my GPA was sub-par, despite long nights of studying. Anyway, I ended up going for my M.Sc. degree at Rutgers in January 1998. Finished it in 2000, then my PhD degree in 2006. Somehow, I ended up living the exact same life I always visualized. The problem was that I had been myopic during those visualization sessions that I had never thought of what I would have done after my graduate studies. Ended up living in the US for 15 years.
15 years… Sounds long. It didn’t feel like it. I fell in love with a girl in Istanbul and decided to move back to my homeland in August 2012. Married in November 2014. Still in love. We had a baby boy in August 2018. Life has never been better.
I weave back and forth between Turkey and the U.S. I work closely with the research team at C2SMART center and Rutgers University.
I am not very good at this website thing though. I update the contents of the site sporadically, whenever I have free time. Well… This is pretty much it. Whatever I wrote up there are subject to change.