08/04/2026
Sabancı University achieved a significant success in the BAGEP awards, given annually to support outstanding young scientists for new research. Five academics from Sabancı University were found deserving of the award this year within the scope of the program conducted by the Academy of Sciences. The success of Associate Professor Adnan Kefal, Dr. Duygu Kuzuoğlu Öztürk, Dr. Alhun Aydın, Dr. Dimitrios Papathanasiou, and Associate Professor A. Doruk Günaydın once again demonstrated the university's strong position in scientific production. The BAGEP awards will be presented to their recipients at a ceremony to be held at the Sabancı University Performing Arts Center on April 18 this year.
Sabancı University faculty members continue to attract attention in the scientific world with their original research spanning different disciplines. The award-winning studies demonstrate the university's research-oriented approach.
Digital twin technologies predicting structural safety
Associate Professor Adnan Kefal, a faculty member at Sabancı University's Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, focuses on a digital twin approach supported by uncertainty quantification and machine learning that can perform real-time deformation reconstruction from fiber optic sensor data in his award-winning work. The aim is to obtain full-field deformation and damage indicators from limited sensor data, particularly in aviation, maritime, and energy structures. The study also aims to contribute to the development of predictive structural health monitoring systems by presenting these outputs with confidence intervals. Furthermore, the integration of this scientific infrastructure with domestic and national software and hardware solutions is also targeted.
New Targets in Cancer Treatment
Dr. Duygu Kuzuoğlu Öztürk, a faculty member at Sabancı University's Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, received an award for her work focusing on developing innovative strategies against treatment-resistant prostate cancer. The studies aim to halt the production of the Androgen Receptor, which plays a leading role in cancer growth, and to elucidate unknown aspects of this protein. They also aim to identify new and precise treatment targets by deciphering the protein production networks that cancer cells manipulate to survive.
New Approaches to Unraveling the Mysteries of Quantum Materials
Dr. Alhun Aydın, a faculty member at Sabancı University's Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, is developing new approaches to the theoretical understanding of quantum materials with his award-winning work. His quantum acoustics studies aim to reveal the microscopic origins of universal transport anomalies such as Planckian diffusion and unusual electronic, optical, thermal, and acoustic behaviors in disordered systems. He is also working on new Hamiltonian engineering methods that allow for the control of energy levels and gaps in open and multi-body quantum systems without altering their global spectral properties.
New Horizons in Operator Theory in Mathematics
Dr. Dimitrios Papathanasiou, a faculty member at Sabancı University's Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, who was awarded by the Academy of Sciences, states that his work on the dynamic properties of weighted shift operators on directed trees in recent years has initiated a new research trend in the field. Following these studies, he explains that they further generalized this class of operators by considering weighted shifts on directed general graphs, and emphasizes that with the support of BAGEP, they aim to obtain new results that will contribute to a better understanding of operators in Banach and Hilbert spaces.
A New Approach to Measuring Uncertainty on a Global Scale
The award-winning work of Associate Professor A. Doruk Günaydın, a faculty member at Sabancı Business School, aims to differentiate the concepts of "risk" and "uncertainty," which are often used interchangeably in financial literature, within a holistic framework. Stating that risk refers to known outcomes and uncertainty to situations where even probabilities are unknown, Associate Professor Günaydın aims to develop a new uncertainty index derived directly from market data, instead of subjective analyst predictions. This index will be tested with data from more than 50 countries, and the plan is to examine whether uncertainty is a pricing factor on a global scale.
A Strong Program Supporting Scientific Production
The BAGEP awards, given by the Academy of Sciences since 2013 to reward young academics and support new research, continue to contribute to strengthening academic production in Türkiye by supporting scientists from different disciplines every year. Researchers who receive awards under the program are supported for two years, aiming to encourage original and high-quality scientific work. In this respect, BAGEP continues to be an important platform contributing to the development of the scientific research ecosystem in Türkiye.
