The winner of the Hakan Orbay Research Award Competition 2020, commemorating Hakan Orbay, the late faculty member of Sabancı Business School, has been announced.

Dr. Umit Yılmaz (MA in Economics, Sabanci University and PhD in Finance,Swiss Finance Institute & USI) received 7th Hakan Orbay Research Award 2020 with his paper “Why do firms borrow from Foreign Banks?”.  

Dr. Yılmaz, Assistant Professor of Finance at Özyeğin University, received his award with a ceremony on 15 January 2021.

Mehmet Kuru, instructor at Foundation Development Directorate (FDD) , was found eligible for the TÜBİTAK 3501 Career Development Program fund. 

Mehmet Kuru’s project is entitled  “Aesop Alla Turca: A study on Turkish Translations of Aesop Fables From Pre-Tanzimat Era in the Context of Cultural Translation”

“Project scope that deals with various disciplines such as cultural history, cultural translation and literature history, involves the Turkish translation of Aesop fables from pre-Tanzimat era. In the fields of literature history and the translation history, the studies which are built upon the dominant paradigm, suggest that the first translated literary works from western languages into Turkish were prepared during the Tanzimat era as a repercussion of the social, cultural and institutional transformation observed in the nineteenth century. In the stage of the preliminary research, several manuscripts of Aesop translations that were located in the different European libraries, belong to the pre-Tanzimat era. As the main subjects of this project, these manuscripts challenge the dominant paradigm. Considering these discoveries, the early translated literary works from western languages date back to the seventeenth century. These texts which have a pivotal importance, may provide an alternative perspective for the literature and cultural history and the findings may stimulate a new discussion on these matters” said Mehmet Kuru about his project.

Sabancı University MBA program is a full-time program welcoming students without prior work experience and hands on training program offering Company Action Projects in top multinational and local companies in Turkey during their education. 

Program offers an international environment in our class and exchange programs abroad during summer term.  

Details about the program will shared on 23 January 2021, Saturday at 10:00 am (GMT+3) in the online information session. 

A brief presentation on the MBA Admissions process and scholarship opportunities will be available to students from all around the world. 

Date:  23 Ocak 2021, Saturday 

Time: 10:00 pm (GMT+3) 

Location:  Please click here for registration.

For more information, you can send an e-mail to mba@sabanciuniv.edu

The IICEC News Round-Up is a special bi-monthly product of IICEC to provide latest news and headlines about IICEC activities.

Please click to read. 

SU Gender is entering 2021 with four H2020 projects. As of January 2021, a new project has been added to its existing portfolio consisting of the GEARING-Roles (2019-2022) project, seeking to strengthen gender equality mechanisms,  and WHOLE-COMM (2021-2025) ve Re-ROOT (2021-2024) projects, examining migration and integration at different urban scales and layers. The RESISTIRE (RESpondIng to outbreaks through co-creaTIve sustainable inclusive equality stRatEgies) project, which was ranked 5th among 162 applications, has succeeded in securing over 5.2 million Euros funding under the H2020 COVID-19 call (with a Sabancı University budget of 247.975 EUR).

RESISTIRE brings together 10 institutions from 9 countries in a strongly multi-disciplinary and multi-sector consortium, being coordinated by the European Science Foundation (ESF) and including as project partners Örebro University (Sweden), Yellow Window (Belgium), Oxford Brookes University (UK), Knowledge & Innovation (Italy), Technical University Dublin (Ireland), Sabancı University (Turkey), Universidad de Deusto (Spain), Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (Czech Republic) and Sciensano (Belgium).

The consortium integrates public health, humanities, STEM and social sciences; it is formed by a collaboration of experts from anthropology, computational anthropology, design, economics, education, employment research, environmental sciences, gender studies, health sciences, law, management science, political science, product development, psychology, social and health studies, sociology and statistics. In terms of geographic scope, the project is organized to cover 30 countries of which 8 are covered through the consortium members and 22 are covered by a network of national researchers. At Sabancı, the project will be led by Ayşe Gül Altınay ve Kristen Sarah Biehl, with Aslı İkizoğlu, Ayşecan Terzioğlu, Gülru Göker and Hülya Adak also taking part in the multi-disciplinary research team.

The overarching aim of RESISTIRE is to understand and work towards individual and societal resilience to the unequal impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak and its policy responses on behavioural, social and economic inequalities in 30 countries, by designing devising and piloting solutions for improved new policies and social innovations to be deployed by policymakers, stakeholders and actors in the field in different policy domains. As early evidence already suggests, sex and gender influence COVID-19 outcomes in multiple aspects including, differential mortality rates, uneven distribution of care whether due to lockdown measures or as healthcare professionals and rising gender-based violence. It is also known that gender differences intersect with class, age, disability and other inequalities (e.g. race/ethnicity, religion/belief, sexuality, gender identity). Therefore, in meeting the project aim, the project builds around a 'gender+' lens that both highlights gender relations/inequalities and considers how it is related to other inequalities. Analytically, RESISTIRE will draw on an intersectionality-based policy analysis framework, which has emerged to advance understandings of the differential impacts of health policies to produce inclusive and socially just health outcomes. Empirically, RESISTIRE will use the policy domains in the Gender Equality Strategy (EC 2020), fundamental human rights and environmental justice (the latter from the Beijing Platform) to focus the areas for analysis of the impact on inequalities.

The overall methodology of RESISTIRE, which will run over 24 months between 2021-2023, is based on co-creative, solution and innovation driven design-thinking. Essentially, RESISTIRE uses a participatory approach, where stakeholders and end-users are involved throughout the process and cycles, with techniques that go from consultation to co-creation. The workplan is designed to split the project into three short (6-8 month) cycles devoting time and resources to researching the impacts of the outbreak policies (including both quantitative and qualitative data), translating results into insights in order to develop operational tools through co-design workshops, disseminating knowledge, developing policy recommendations and empowering stakeholders to exploit project results.

With its multidisciplinary research team, including anthropology, sociology, political science, geography, literature, cultural studies and gender studies, SU Gender will be researching the inequalities created or deepened as a result of the pandemic in Turkey through an intersectional gender lens, examining the ways in which the most vulnerable groups in society have experienced this process, and working with all stakeholders in the field towards developing creative strategies and effective policies. 

Sabancı University Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS), faculty members Mert Moral ve Mustafa Oğuz Afacan, are the recipients of the 2020 TUBA (Turkish Academy of Sciences) Outstanding Young Scientists Award. The award is  given annually by the Academy.

The TÜBA-GEBİP Awards have been presented since 2001 to award and encourage the outstanding achievements of young scientists, to foster the continuation of their scientific studies in Turkey, the foundation of their own working groups, and the implementation of Turkish based international level, high quality projects and the resulting publications in the fields of nature, engineering, health sciences and social sciences. Within the scope of the program, besides the financial support of 20 thousand lira each year to the award winners for 3 years, an additional support of 6 thousand lira each year for doctoral students at the dissertation stage and consultancy by the academy members are also provided. Moreover, TÜBA-GEBİP Award winners abecome members of TÜBA Young Academy. 

We congratulate our faculty members who won the 2020 TÜBA GEBİP Awards on their success.

The METU Prof. Dr. Mustafa N. Parlar Education and Research Foundation 2020 Awards have been announced. Sabancı University is the institution with the highest number of awards this year, as it was last year, with a total of 6 awards, one for "Science" and five for "Research Incentives". 

Sabancı University School of Management (YBF) academic staff member Arzu Wasti received the Mustafa Parlar Foundation Science Award, which is given to scientists who have contributed significantly to science at the international level with their scientific studies and research or who have contributed significantly to the development of the country with their scientific findings.

Sabancı University Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences (FENS) Faculty Member, Burak Kocuk, Arts and Social Sciences Faculty (FASS) Faculty Member, Cenk Özbay, FENS Faculty Member, Kağan Kurşungöz, FASS Faculty Member, Mustafa Oğuz Afacan and FASS Faculty Member, Nüfer Yasin Ateş, have received the Mustafa Parlar Foundation Research Incentive Award, which is given to young researchers under the age of 40 who have contributed to the development of one of the fields of science or helped solve problems in the country related to their field. 

We congratulate our faculty on their important achievements!

The theme for the 2021 edition of the annual Sakıp Sabancı International Research Awards given by Sabancı University is "Post-Corona World And Turkey: Social Psychological And Political Impacts Of The Pandemics.” The deadline for submissions is February 5, 2021.

The Sakıp Sabancı International Research Awards involves a Jury Prize that will be awarded to an individual who has made distinguished contributions on the above-mentioned theme.

In addition to the Jury Prize, Essay Awards will be given to three researchers under 45 years of age. An independent and international jury will select the Essay Award and Jury Prize awardees. 

The deadline for submissions is February 5, 2021

Award Theme

In coping with Covid-19 pandemic, government policies in the world displayed considerable differences. While some governments implemented social distancing through emergency laws, others approached this as a matter of personal choice and ventured into persuading their citizens towards self-confinement, with mixed success. In the fight against the pandemic, the success of the government policies became increasingly dependent on the behavior of their citizens. Civic activism was curtailed along with the decline in the citizens’ ability to come together, organize and advocate. Nevertheless, new civil society actors and a novel type of civic activism emerged in attempts to provide essential services such as food and masks, stop the spread of incorrect and harmful information as well as protect the disadvantaged and marginalized groups.

What were the social psychological factors in understanding the impact of perceived threat of spreading Covid-19? Did the pandemic increase potentially maladaptive collective defensive behaviors, such as stigmatization, xenophobia, social isolation, fear of job loss, distrust toward health system and governments, as well as adaptive social behaviors, such as, social cohesion, creative collective actions, and altruism?

What were the factors behind the adoption of such different government policies and citizen behavior in the face of the pandemic? Did the pandemic trigger novel government policies and citizen behavior or rather lend more credence to the already existing tendencies and status quo? What were the impacts of societal underpinnings such as the prevalence of individual and/or collective life styles in different societies in addressing the pandemic? Can individual autonomy coexist alongside the collective needs of the societies facing the pandemic? How did the government and citizens in Turkey respond to the pandemic and how do these responses compare with their counterparts in other countries?  Can responses to the pandemic enable us to cope better with other impending threats such as climate change?

Sabancı University Faculty of Engineering an Natural Sciences member and SUNUM researcher Ali Kosar was appointed as the Subject Editor in the Elsevier journal Applied Thermal Engineering for a 3 year period.    

Ali Kosar will handle peer-review processes of the submitted manuscripts about specific topics.

Applied Thermal Engineering

The journal Applied Thermal Engineering is one of the most prestigious journals in the field of Thermal Sciences and has a CiteScore of 8.8.  It lies within Top 10% of the journals in the categories of Energy Engineering and Power Technology (18/216) and Industrial and Manufacturing Technology (15/340).

Sabancı University Integrated Manufacturing Research and Application Center (SU-IMC) Integrated Manufacturing Webinar Series continues with Spilios Fassois's "Vibration Based Robust Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) Under Varying Operating Conditions & Uncertainty: Principles & Advances" seminar.

Please click to register webinar. 

Sabancı University Integrated Manufacturing Research and Application Center (SU-IMC) organizes series of thematic seminars/webinars at different levels of academia and industry to understand and prioritize the recent institutional, organizational and technical developments for the Composite Structures. 

SU-IMC Thematic Webinar Series program