Award from Turkish Academy of Sciences (TÜBA) to Our Faculty Members

2020 TÜBA International Academy, GEBİP and TESEP awards, which hold a special and respectable place in the world of science, were given to their owners in a ceremony organized under the auspices of the Presidency of the Republic of Turkey. In the TÜBİTAK and TÜBA Science Awards Ceremony held at the Presidential Complex, our President presented their awards to our faculty members Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mustafa Evren Erşahin, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Burcu Özsoy and Prof. Dr. Cengiz Yıldırım.

2020 Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) and Turkish Academy of Sciences (TÜBA) awards were given to their owners in a ceremony held at Beştepe National Congress and Culture Center under the auspices of the Presidency.

Scientific work of our three faculty members, who frequently receive mention for their scientific and academic studies at the national and international level, were deemed worthy for award. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mustafa Evren Erşahin received the 2020 “TÜBİTAK Encouragement Award” in Engineering Sciences and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Burcu Özsoy and Prof. Dr. Cengiz Yıldırım were deemed worthy for Outstanding Young Scientist Award (TÜBA-GEBİP).

Award for qualified work in the field of membrane technology

Our University’s Faculty of Civil Engineering, Environmental Engineering Department faculty member Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mustafa Evren Erşahin was granted the award “for his high-quality work at international level on energy efficient wastewater treatment and dynamic membrane technology in the field of environmental engineering”. Erşahin conducts research on Energy Efficiency in Wastewater Treatment, Innovative Wastewater Treatment Processes, Dynamic Membrane Technology, Anaerobic Biotechnology, Anaerobic and Aerobic Membrane Bioreactor (MBR) Technology, Biosystem Modelling.

Award from TÜBA to Scientific Studies in Antarctica

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Burcu Özsoy, who is the coordinator of the Turkish Scientific Base project in Antarctica and additionally the national leader for the polar science program strategy, and Prof. Dr. Cengiz Yıldırım, who has scientific articles about Antarctica published in international refereed journals, won the “TÜBA-GEBİP Polar Studies Award” within the framework of “Antarctic Research and Scientific Base Project”, which was determined as a strategic and national priority field by the Council this year.

We congratulate our faculty members for their scientific contributions and wish them continued success.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mustafa Evren Erşahin

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mustafa Evren Erşahin completed his undergraduate at Trakya University Department of Environmental Engineering, and his master’s at Istanbul Technical University Department of Environmental Engineering. He completed his Ph.D. in 2015 under a joint program between Istanbul Technical University and Delft University of Technology. He has been working at Istanbul Technical University Department of Environmental Engineering since 2005. His most important scientific contributions are in anaerobic biotechnology, energy-efficient wastewater treatment processes, dynamic membrane technology, membrane bioreactors and recovery of renewable energy (biomethane). The major contribution of Dr. Erşahin’s scientific studies is the concept of sustainable management of environment, in which wastewater is seen as a resource and it is aimed to recover the energy and usable materials in it at the maximum level and reuse the treated water. With this understanding, wastewater treatment can be achieved by using minimum area and energy and by even generating energy.

Dr. Erşahin has 40 international articles within the scope of SCI/SCIE and over 100 scientific publications. His citations have received over 1500 citations and his h-index is 20.

Dr. Erşahin has been deemed worthy for 5 awards, 4 of which are international, for his scientific contributions. In 2017, he received "Waternet Water Cycle Innovation Award", which is given to studies that make a major scientific contribution in the field of urban water cycle. In 2016, he was granted the "GWP Award" given by German Water Partnership to researchers who make outstanding studies in the field of sustainable wastewater treatment. In addition, he received the Huygens Doctoral Research Scholarship, which is the most prestigious scholarship given by the Government of the Netherlands to a very limited number of people every year.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Burcu Özsoy

Gaziantep born Assoc. Prof. Dr. Burcu Özsoy, received her undergraduate and master’s education at Yildiz Technical University Department of Geodesy and Photogrammetry Engineering. In 2001, she started working at Istanbul Technical University Maritime Faculty as a teaching staff. She started her Ph.D. studies at University of Texas at San Antonio in 2005. In 2006, she conducted a field study on monitoring of Antarctic sea ice through satellite images and had the opportunity to work at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center at USA on the same subject. In 2015, her 3 million Euro-budget “Horizon 2020” project in cooperation with European countries involving Arctic and Antarctic regions was accepted and Özsoy became the coordinator of the project in Turkey. In January 2015, she became the founding director of Polar Research Application and Research Center (PolReC) established at Istanbul Technical University and continued her duty until December 2019. With its managerial staff and national and international collaborations, PolReC, which is Turkey’s first polar research center, undertook the coordination of the Turkish Scientific Base project in Antarctica under the auspices of the Presidency of the Republic of Turkey as well as the role of national umbrella in the polar scientific program strategy. Özsoy acted as the project coordinator and expedition leader in the First, Second and Third National Antarctic Scientific Expeditions realized in 2017, 2018 and 2019 within the framework of “Antarctic Turkish Scientific Base project”. In July 2019, she undertook the role of project coordinator and expedition leader in the first Turkish Arctic Scientific Expedition. She enabled more than 70 of our scientists to conduct scientific studies at the poles. She has given expert opinion to the special report concerning ocean and cryosphere regions published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Özsoy is currently the Director of TÜBİTAK MAM Polar Research Institute established on December 3, 2019, as well as Vice President of TÜBİTAK Marmara Research Center. Özsoy has acted as the coordinator of the Fourth Antarctic Scientific Expedition realized in 2020 and she has been elected to the Scientific Steering Committee of the Southern Ocean Observing System and the 2020 Newton Prize Committee.

Prof. Dr. Cengiz Yıldırım

Cengiz Yıldırım was born in Bursa in 1975. He completed his primary school education at Bursa Balabanbey Primary School, his secondary and high school education at Bursa Boys’ High School. Yıldırım completed his undergraduate and master’s education at Istanbul University Department of Geography, and his Ph.D. at Istanbul Technical University Eurasia Institute of Earth Sciences in 2008. During his Ph.D. he worked at General Directorate of Mineral Research and Exploration’s Department of Geological Studies as a geomorphologist. Between 2008-2010, he worked at German Research Center for Geosciences (Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam) and between 2010-2012 at University of Potsdam, Institute of Earth and Environmental Sciences, again in Germany, as a post-doc researcher. After returning to Turkey in 2012, Yıldırım started to work at Istanbul Technical University Eurasia Institute of Earth Sciences as a faculty member. His research topics are geomorphology, active faults, coasts, glaciers, natural disasters, and recently Mars. Yıldırım has 30 scientific articles on Anatolia, Dinar Mountains (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia), South America (Patagonia) and Antarctica, all published in refereed international journals. Prof. Dr. Cengiz Yıldırım was granted the Humboldt Research Award, one of Germany’s respectable science awards given by Alexander von Humboldt (AvH) Foundation, in 2020.