The eighth semester of the Mercator – IPC Research Fellowship Program, initiated by Sabanci University Istanbul Policy Center in collaboration with Stiftung Mercator, has started. During the welcoming event held in Soho House Istanbul new researchers of the new period and their topics are introduced. 

The new researchers of the most important component of the Istanbul Policy Center- Sabancı University-Stiftung Mercator Initiative, Mercator – IPC Research Fellowship Program, were introduced with a meeting.  Aiming to improve the academic, political and societal relations between Turkey and Germany, Turkey and Europe, IPC Fellowship Program held a welcoming event in Soho House Istanbul for the new period of the program.  While Fuat Keyman Vice President of Sabancı University and IPC Director and Michael Schwarz, Director of Stiftung Mercator have made the opening speech; the event continued with the speeches of Senem Aydın-Düzgit, IPC Research and Academic Affairs Coordinator and Mercator-IPC Senior Scholars Atila Eralp, Aslı Aydıntaşbaş and Michael Thumann.  

"Scorecard for Eight Years: Strong and Consolidated Ties between Germany and Turkey"

Speaking at the opening of the event, Vice President of Sabancı University and IPC Director Fuat Keyman stated that this is the eighth year of the program and the program welcomed 51 researchers and 14 senior scholars, hosted more than 250 panels in Turkey and abroad, conference, that they organized events such as book introduction; and said they are cooperating with more than 30 national and international organizations. Keyman stated that they have published more than 100 global publications within IPC, they have prepared and published hundreds of columns, academic articles and presentations in different channels, and they have held four meetings in Istanbul within the scope of its alumni network. 

Emphasizing that IPM operating under the roof of Sabancı University is represented in the last COP (International Climate Change) Conferences in Warsaw, Lima, Paris and Bonn and it is considered as a significant connection point by Turkish academicians and media,  Keyman continued his words as follows, 

“When our IPC was established eight years ago, our vision, we determined our vision as academic meticulousness, creativity, interest, teamwork and friendship. In terms of the relationship between Turkey and European Union-Germany, our goal is to create a new driving force to increase the partnership in this field.   We stressed in our projects the role European Union in the democratization and the political transformation in Turkey. We also focused on the modernization of the customs union and refugee problems. Until now, we have examined our studies within the context of the situation of Syrians coming to Turkey and the policies determined for them.

In terms of climate change, we have become a center in Turkey with the activities that we organize and support in order to create network, recommend policies and create public awareness. Low-carbon building, regional role of Turkey in energy policies and coal policies were also included in our projects."

While finishing his speech Keyman, thanked the Güler Sabancı, Chairman of the Board of Trustees,  Yusuf Leblebici, Rector and Senior Advisor Kemal Derviş for their support and trust in IPC and Rudiger Frohn, Michael Schwarz, Anne Duncker  and Jannes Tessman from Stiftung Mercator for their cooperation.

Michael Schwarz: “People Make a Difference. IPC made a difference”

Speaking at the meeting, Stiftung Mercator Director Michael Schwarz stated that many things have changed since the establishment of IPC – Sabancı University - Stiftung Mercator Initiative and continued his words as follows: "We had the opportunity to express different views and the chance to strengthen the same views. IPC is a very good example of how people can make a difference.” 

Mercator-IPM Researchers of 2019/20 will continue to work in a wide range covering EU-Germany relationships and Climate Change such as Turkey's geopolitical role through Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway in Europe-Asia Connection; the inclusion of the Syrians in the labor market of Turkey; the roles of non-governmental organizations in Turkey and Germany in inclusive education practices; management of urban water demand in Istanbul and Berlin and the role of energy cooperatives in democratic energy transformation. 

At the end of the meeting, a video including the summary of this year's topics and researchers, Andrea Weiss, Ellen Kollender, Gokce Uysal, Akgun Ilhan and Sinan Erensu 'was aired.  

Sabancı University Istanbul International Center for Energy and Climate (IICEC) has released the seventh issue of IICEC Energy Market Newsletter. 

Please click to read IICEC Energy Market Newsletter.

SU Gender, in collaboration with Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University Women’s Studies Research Center, hosted the feminist writer, theorist and professor Cynthia Enloe from Clark University, an internationally renowned academician for her work on gender and militarism as well as for her significant contributions to the field of feminist international relations. In her talk she gave at Karakoy Minerva Palas, Enloe said, “Women’s rights are human rights and human rights are women’s rights.”

Sabancı University Gender and Women Studies Center of Excellence (SU Gender) continues to invite new people working on the issues of gender. This time, in collaboration with Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University Women’s Studies Research Center, SU Gender hosted the feminist writer, theorist and professor Cynthia Enloe from Clark University, an internationally renowned academician for her work on gender and militarism as well as for her significant contributions to the field of feminist international relations. In her talk she gave at Karaköy Minerva Palas, Enloe referred to Charlotte Bunch’s famous saying, “Women’s rights are human rights, and human rights are women’s rights.”

Enloe, being a research professor in the Department of International Development, Community, and Environment (IDCE), addressed to the 30-year period paving up the way to the  #MeToo campaign that recently became viral in the world and shared the journey of how women have attained the current legislative regulations pursuant to sexual harassment in decades.

When American actress Alyssa Milano on 15 October 2017 first tweeted in her social media account “If you have been sexually harassed or assaulted, write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet”, she launched “MeToo” movement that gave voice to women’s exposure to flirt violence, harassment or sexual assault and turned into a global reaction being a trend topic on twitter for 100 days.

Tens of thousands of women and men revealed to the world their sexual harassment and rape stories which they have never shared even with their closest circle before with the hashtag “MeToo”.

This tweet has been retweeted or liked thousands of times and received over 40.000 replies. #MeToo campaign was launched to prove how prevalent sexual harassment was and what kind of a risk it posed for women in all workplaces including Hollywood.  Some of the celebrities who supported to the campaign included Lady Gaga, Debra Messing, Anna Paquin and Evan Rachel Wood. In the meantime, the results of the movement have become a topic for academic discussion.

Milestones of Women’s Movement are Important!

Professor Enloe summarized the 30-year history of international feminist struggle for women’s rights paving up the way to  #MeToo movement and shared the journey of how women have attained the current legislative regulations pursuant to sexual harassment in decades as well as in terms of significant achievements as follows:

1969: The first women’s studies program. Enloe emphasized the importance of this year for women as the first women’s studies program was started in the University of California San Diego. She said, “It was a serious intellectual collective project to make sense of the world by taking women seriously. By 1976, we offered the first courses. These are the most important dates in the history of human-kind, but they are also interesting to position ourselves today.”

1979: Enloe, also referring to the United Nations General Assembly meeting, said, “The passage of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) was 34 years after the founding of the United Nations. USA and Sudan did not ratify the convention. The second important topic is the naming of sexual harassment: for the first time in print an intellectual journal in public form referred to sexual harassment.  Sexual harassment is a pattern of violence against women. If you can’t name something, it is really hard to challenge it.

1987 Women’s March Against Battering. Women were out in the streets in those times. “I learned that a women’s march against violence in 1987 took place in Istanbul, at Yoğurtçu Park.”

1991: A young African-American woman Anita Hill who was sexually harassed by Supreme Court candidate Clarence Thomas told her harassment story at the US Senate. This has brought sexual harassment to a new public attention. There were two cases similar to this in the politics. Nobody believed the words of an African-American woman.

1993: Enloe expressed her witnessing to the incredible success of transnational feminist activists who attended the UN Conference on Human Rights held at Vienna to end violations of women’s human rights. She said, “Human rights have to be understood through a gender-frame. Violence against women should be included as one of the major violations of human rights. Domestic violence, wartime systematic rape… Are all of them violations of human rights? These were the topics discussed and transnational feminist activists came to Vienna to insist on inclusion of such matters.”

1994: Enloe, referring to a hearing in Arusha Court held by United Nations Security Council for prosecutions of Ruanda Genocide, expressed that for the first time in the history of humankind, a man was convicted for an autonomous charge of wartime rape. She mentioned, “He was convicted for war crime of rape because of his radio strips. Besides, at the time, in the criminal court held in Lahey for Yugoslavian war crimes, it was being attempted to pass the law on rape as a war crime.”

1998: Enloe, stating that Rome Statute is the founding document of International Crimes Court (ICC) decreed in United Nations Conference, highlighted, “When the governments in Rome came together, they were not just creating ICC, they were also creating the terms of ICC. They were creating the fine print about what is prosecutable. They were creating definitions of what a war crime is.” 

Collaboration Space workshops continue in January 2020. 

Collaboration Space January Workshops

3D Print Workshop

17 January 2020 at 15:30

Get a general idea about 3D printing technology and learn how to slice an object for 3D printing.

Please click to register.  

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Soldering Workshop

2 January 2020 at 14:30

Basic soldering techniques will be shown for soldering PCB circuits and electronic
components. Attendees get hands on experience.

Please click to register. 

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Introduction to Programming with Python

10 January 2020 at 13:00

In this workshop you will learn the following:

- Strings and list manipulation

- Loops to iterate through strings, lists and ranges

- Variable declaration

- Variable types

- Example algorithms

Bring your own computers.

Install Anaconda for Pyhton 3.7 using the link below, before coming to the workshop.

https://www.anaconda.com/distribution/#download-section

Please click to register.

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2D Design and Laser Cutting Workshop

7 January 2020 at 13:30

Learn how to design with Tinkercad in 2D and manufacture your design with laser cutter.

Please click to register.

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Sabancı University Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences member and SUNUM researcher Ali Kosar will serve as the editor in the special issue on “Recent Advances in Thermal Transport in Porous Media for Engineering Applications” to be published in the Elsevier journal Applied Thermal Engineering.

Ali Kosar will closely work with the Guest Editors and handle peer-review processes of the submitted manuscripts. 

The system will become open to submissions on the 15th January 2020. More information can be found using this link.

The journal Applied Thermal Engineering 

The journal Applied Thermal Engineering is one of the most prestigious journals in the field of Thermal Sciences.  

The second “Sabancı University Leading in Digital Technologies: Cybersecurity, cryptography, blockchain” event hosted by Sabancı University Ankara Project Office took place on December 9^th 2019.

At the opening of the event, Elif Tepeli, the manager of Sabancı University Ankara Project Office said “This is a follow-up event to a very similar one we held in Ankara a short while ago. We would like to take the opportunity to introduce our expertise in Digital Technologies to our partners in industry and the digital eco-system. At Sabancı University we are firm believers of market pull / research push strategy to better our academic abilities. We aim to improve our relationship with our industrial partners.”

left to right: Sabancı EDU Director Cüneyt Evirgen, TÜBİTAK President Prof. Dr. Hasan Mandal, Sabancı University President Prof. Dr. Yusuf Leblebici and Sabancı University Secretary General Rasim Karas

President of Sabancı University, Prof. Dr. Yusuf Leblebici mentioned the necessity to act together with stakeholders and said “At Sabancı University we are advancing especially in digital technologies, data analytics and cyber security. We value the fact that our research in this area directly supports industry and society in general and we are working to create awareness in different layers of the eco-system. To share our expertise in the area and create new opportunities for cooperation is an important and valuable target for us”.

President of TÜBİTAK, Prof. Dr. Hasan Mandal underlined the importance of such events for creating the culture of cooperation, mentioning that especially the 11th Development Plan of Turkey prioritizes digital technologies. He also emphasized that such cooperations between industry and universities will help improve their contribution to the national economy.

Sabancı University President Prof. Dr. Yusuf Leblebici and TÜBİTAK President Prof. Dr. Hasan Mandal

Şirzen Yılmaz from Sabancı DX, Cüneyt Evirgen from Sabancı EDU and Banu Sarıoğlu on behalf of Turkish Cyber Security Cluster also contributed to the event. 

In his keynote speech, Dr. Mustafa Afyonluoğlu, senior expert on cybersecurity, e-governance and e-state, put forward the questions ‘cyber security for blockchain or blockchain for cyber security?’, ‘which professions will be negatively affected by blockchain technology’, ‘which sectors could make a leap forward with blockchain?’, ‘what new developments are talked about in the world’ and pointed to the need of trust between stakeholders. Sabancı University professor Dr. Erdinç Öztürk gave information on new generation blockchain infrastructure and talked about the details of MIT LCS35 crypto puzzle that was solved by Sabancı University team a short while ago. 

Yusuf Leblebici and Mustafa Afyonluoğlu

An expert panel was organized as part of the event. Moderated by Dr. Selim Balcısoy, the participants of the panel, Dr. Albert Levi, Dr. Erdinç Öztürk, Dr. Kamer Kaya, Dr. Erkay Savaş and Dr. Orçun Çetin discussed the new developments in cybersecurity, cryptology and blockchain applications. 

Representatives from cybersecurity student club were also present at the event. Thematic face to face meetings between industry representatives and technology experts were held to explore potential collaboration areas.

Sabancı Business School ranked 69th in Financial Times European Business School Rankings 2019 which one of the world’s most prestigious ranking.  Sabancı Business School’s ranking is the highest rank in Turkey.

Sabancı Executive MBA Program has also been ranked 94th in the “World’s Best Executive MBA Programs Ranking 2019” and 42th in Europe.

This is the 16th annual Financial Times ranking of European Business Schools. It is a composite ranking based on the combined performance of Europe’s leading schools across the five main rankings of programmes published by the FT in 2019: MBA, Executive MBA, Masters in Management (MiM) and the two rankings of non-degree executive education programmes.

The ranking measures the quality of schools and the scope of programs. Evaluation criteria are: Salary and salary increase of alumni, open educations in executive development programs, customized programs, percentage of female faculty members, percentage of international faculty members and percentage of faculty members with doctorate degree.

Sabancı Business School Dean Prof. Nihat Kasap said “We are proud to be among the FT European Best Business Schools and have Executive MBA in the FT 2019 EMBA ranking.  The rankings of Sabancı Business School, Executive MBA program and Executive Development Unit  “Executive Education – Customised Programs” prove the quality of its education and research internationally”

A cooperation protocol was signed between Sabancı University and Sakıp Sabancı Anatolian High School. Within the scope of the cooperation, the teachers and students of Sakıp Sabancı Anatolian High School will realize new projects by benefiting from the resources and opportunities of Sabancı University.

Sabancı University President Yusuf Leblebici, Sakıp Sabancı Anatolian High School Principal Sedat IŞIK

Sabancı University Rector Yusuf Leblebici and Sakıp Sabancı Anatolian High School Director Sedat IŞIK signed a cooperation protocol. With the education practices, it is aimed to reach the highest national and internationally accepted educational standards, to improve the quality of education and to ensure its continuity.

The students and teachers of Sakıp Sabancı Anatolian High School will participate in the researches, social activities, trainings and projects of Sabancı University's laboratories, technology and research centers, information center, etc., for scientific studies, researches, social activities, projects and projects agreed jointly by the parties.  The most successful students, who are entitled to move to the next year at Sakıp Sabancı Anatolian High School will be entitled to attend Sabancı University Summer School for High School program.

As members of Sabancı University, together with the employees of Sabancı Group, within the scope of “It Worths Running” project, we participated in the Istanbul Marathon.

You can contribute to the fundraising process which continues until 17th November 2019 Sunday by registering through  İyilik Peşinde Koş (Run for Good) system . You can use the instruction document to register for İyilik Peşinde Koş system.