In 2023, ITU’s success in sustainability-themed rankings of rating agencies such as QS, GreenMetric and THE attracted attention. In addition, our academics and students achieved many successes with the sustainable technologies they developed.
Istanbul Technical University (ITU)
aimed to make sustainability an important part of its corporate identity by
declaring 2023, the 250th anniversary of its establishment, the “Year of
Sustainability.” In line with this goal, ITU spent 2023 achieving many
successes in terms of sustainability. These achievements were reflected in ITU
News and approximately 30 news articles about sustainability were published in
2023.
ITU is the leader in
green-themed university rankings
ITU ranked 221st in the world in
the QS
World University Rankings: Sustainability 2024 overall ranking. While it
ranked 148th in the world in the “Environmental Impact” category, it ranked 1st
in Türkiye.
ITU also achieved a significant
success with the result it achieved in THE
2023 Impact Ranking and managed to enter the top ten worldwide under two
headings. According to the results of THE 2023 Impact Rankings, ITU rose eight
places in the “Quality Education” heading compared to last year and ranked 10th
worldwide this year. ITU also ranked 23rd worldwide in the goal titled
“Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure.”
Türkiye’s greenest campus
for six years
ITU Ayazağa Campus became “the
World’s 46th Most Sustainable Campus” in the 2023
UI GreenMetric rankings. ITU, which ranks 26th among European universities
in this ranking, continued to be Türkiye’s greenest and most sustainable campus
this year, as it has been for the past six years.
Sustainability-oriented
inventions and designs
In 2023, ITU’s academics, students,
and graduates achieved many successes in sustainability.
ITU won the first prize in the “ Green
Technology” category within the scope of the Uniq Zone Patent Competition
held at the MÜSİAD Visionary 2023 Summit. Our Vice Rector Prof. Dr. Ali Deniz,
who represented our University at the ceremony held on November 4, 2023 as part
of the summit, received the award from Mehmet Fatih Kacır, Minister of Industry
and Technology.
ITU Department of Environmental
Engineering faculty member and Head of Microbial Ecology Group (MEG) Prof. Dr.
Orhan İnce, together with MEG members Prof. Dr. Bahar İnce, Assoc. Prof. Dr.
Sevcan Aydın and Dr. Aiyoub Shahi, made an invention titled “An
Economic Method for Biological Remediation of Petroleum Contaminated
Soils”.
Within the scope of the 2nd
Green Dot Student Awards given by ÇEVKO Foundation, Istanbul Technical
University (ITU) students won second and third place in different categories.
ITU students won awards with their social responsibility practice and packaging
design.
This year’s national winner of
James Dyson Award, a sustainability-oriented engineering competition that
encourages the creation of concrete projects to solve environmental and health
problems, was Suat Batuhan Esirger, our graduate from Architectural Design
Computing master’s program, with his project “Forestguard
2.0”.
“Sustainability” is a part
of ITU’s corporate identity
ITU celebrated 2023, the 250th anniversary of its establishment,
with many events, activities, and studies. While the concept of
“sustainability” was highlighted in these events, ITU referred to
sustainability on many occasions throughout the year.
Our Rector Prof. Dr. İsmail Koyuncu
said the following in a speech in which he emphasized the importance of
sustainability at ITU: “As Istanbul Technical University, we consider
sustainability in depth and attach great importance to it. Through the
activities we carry out, the reports we issue, and the recent successes we have
achieved in this field, we can easily say that we have assumed a pioneering
role in sustainability, and even that sustainability has become a part of our
corporate identity.”