This year’s TEDxSabanciUniversity’s theme is “What is next?”:  In a supremely fast changing world where innovations chase one another, we do not live a day which fails to surprise us. As being part of this incredible speed, we are surprised, excited and inspired at every moment by the breakthroughs taking place in technology, art and science.  

We are longer living in a world where “Sky is the Limit”, and time is the time to go beyond it and discover what is behind the blue. We as TedxSabanciUniversity team are curious to explore what this unstoppable wind of change has to offer, therefore raising this question: “What’s Next?”. You are invited to TEDxSabanciUniversity to find out answers!

This year's speaker list is as follows: Erdem Taylan,Türker Kılıç, Çiğdem Aydın ,Kerem Güneş & Erbil Sivaslıoğlu Üstün Ezer , Necdet Aygoğan,Özgür Bolat , Şirin Bayülgen 

TEDxSabanciUniversity Talks will be held on 27st of February 2014 between 13:00 and 17:00.

During event, we’ll welcome our speakers’ Talks for 18 minutes for each speaker and enjoy Starbucks’s Coffees at coffee breaks. After the event, until 19:00 we’ll  meet with our speakers and our attendees and let them meet and discuss about their talks.

TEDxSabanciUniversity will be at Sabanci Gösteri Merkezi.

Tickers are in sale in internet. You can reach our ticker facebook-twitter accounts.

Sabancı University received the “Most Entrepreneurial and Innovative University in Istanbul” award at the Regional Meeting for Public-University-Industry Cooperation held by the Ministry of Science, Industry and Technology.

The meeting, attended by President Nihat Berker, was held in the İkitelli Industrial Estate.  Also attending the meeting were Fikri Işık, Minister of Science, Industry and Technology; Hüseyin Avni Mutlu, Governor of Istanbul; Fatih Kocabaş, District Administrator of Bahçeşehir; Erdal Bahçıvan, Chairperson of the Istanbul Chamber of Industry, and representatives from universities and industrial companies.

Speaking at the meeting, Minister Işık explained that investment in research and development was critical to achieving Turkey’s objective of 500 billion dollars in exports by 2023.  Calling for partnering academic knowhow with the industry, Işık emphasized the effectiveness of close collaboration between public, university and industry stakeholders, and said, “We will have no concerns for the future if we succeed in bringing people who are willing to do their utmost for their country together within an effective organization.”

Minister Işık said: “Collaborate more with the industry because we will back you up.  If a project submitted to TÜBİTAK by an industrialist has a budget of over 10 billion dollars, we will reject it if a university is not a partner.  The pillar of science must be strong if research is to be sustainable.  Likewise, we will fund 40% of a project rather than 30% if there is a university involved.  We are giving extraordinary support to academic R&D, and will continue to do so.  The R&D funding available this year is TL 1.576 billion.  We wish that the funding is used up effectively this year, so that we may turn around and say that the funding was not enough, that our industry is keen on R&D.  But we couldn’t spend the entire funding last year.  Our universities must pay closer attention to this issue.”

The “Global Competitiveness of Turkey” report issued by Sabancı University - TÜSİAD Competition Forum and SEDEFED was presented to the public.  Speakers at the press event were Federation of Industry Associations (SEDEFED) Chairperson Sefa Targıt and TÜSİAD Chairperson Muharrem Yılmaz. 

Information on the “Global Competitiveness of Turkey” report was presented by School of Management Dean Füsun Ülengin. 

The presentation was followed by a panel discussion on “The role of public and private sectors and professionals in improving competitiveness.”  The moderator of the panel was Dünya daily editor-in-chief Hakan Güldağ, and speakers were Management Consultants Society Chairperson Tülin Seçen, Human Management Society of Turkey Chairperson Yiğit Oğuz Duman, and TÜSİAD Commission for Sector Policies and Relations with Sector Companies President Sedat Şükrü Ünlütürk. 

The Global Competitiveness Index of the World Economic Forum has 12 components and 114 indicators.  These indicators present a comparative view of how national dynamics influence the investment climate and competitive environment in 148 countries.  The public sector, entrepreneurs, businesspeople and professionals of each country play a considerable role in improving these 114 indicators and increasing competitiveness.

Master’s in International Relations aims to provide theoretical knowledge on the international relations discipline, and to equip students with skills relevant to the practical applications of the field.  Focused on methodologies, approaches and policy implementation in international relations, the program’s objective is to reconcile theory and practice.

The program’s main areas of focus include:

• Exploring how international policies are designed and implemented in Turkey and around the world;

• Learning about the historical development and current workings of international political structures and institutions;

• Analyzing the structures, roles and functions of international, regional and supranational organizations;

• Conducting studies on understanding foreign policymaking processes, bureaucratic structures, actor-structure relations and interaction with domestic political environment and actors, as well as determining issues in policymaking;

• Examining the roots and development of international relations theories and new discussions.

Computer Science and Engineering 2013 graduate Serhat Can Leloğlu (BSCS'10 & MSCS'13) came third in the Hack-a-thon, held in California’s Silicon Valley by sponsors including Google, Oracle and BOX.  Can Leloğlu is currently a software engineer in FuzeBox, California.

Hack-a-thon is a 24- or 48-hour project competition and coding marathon on specific subjects and platforms.

Computer Science and Engineering 2007 graduate Sarp Centel (BSCS'07) was featured in the article “Mad Turks of Silicon Valley” in the Hürriyet daily.

Here is an excerpt of the article on Sarp Centel, a member of the team that develops mobile apps for Instagram:

Head hunters got him for Instagram

Sarp Centel is another Turkish national who has been enjoying success in Silicon Valley.  Sarp Centel was employed in the technology department of a mobile operator in Turkey.  He resigned to start his own business, but when that didn’t work out, he started working in a UK-based company.  Centel was discovered by Instagram’s talent hunters, and relocated to the Silicon Valley offices of the company.  Centel is now a member of the team that develops mobile apps for Instagram, which was acquired by Facebook for 1 billion dollars.  Centel says that he gained a year’s worth of experience in a month.  Centel continues, “When my own business did not end up well, I decided to work towards going to Silicon Valley.  The entrepreneurship ecosystem in Turkey is developing rapidly, but my objective is to gain experience in Silicon Valley for five years before starting a technology company in Turkey.”

The original article is available here.

For more information about Sarp Centel, you can visit his personal website.

The latest film of Beyza Boyacıoğlu, a 2009 graduate of Visual Arts and Visual Communication Design who is currently a documentary director in America, was accepted to New York Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA) Documentary Fortnight festival.

Boyacıoğlu’s documentary Toñita’s Club is a portrait of the last Puerto Rican social club in South Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  The documentary will premier during MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight 2014 festival.  The film will be a part of the American Stories short film program and will be screened on February 22 at 2 pm and February 23 at 5 pm.  Screenings will be followed by discussions with directors Beyza Boyacıoğlu and Sebastian Diaz.

Trailer: https://vimeo.com/85047629

Toñita’s is a portrait of the last Puerto Rican social club in South Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a rapidly gentrified area that used to be a neighborhood of Caribbean immigrants.  The short documentary dives into the microcosm of Caribbean Club (also fondly labeled ‘Toñita’s’ after its owner Maria Toñita), in order to talk about urban space, displacement and identity. The film zigzags between nightlife and daytime activities at the club, and the testimonies of its regulars. Music and dance constitute a crucial part of the film as Toñita’s is a love letter to Nuyorican culture. When the club scenes are interrupted with interviews, each testimony touches upon a specific issue, such as the history of the neighborhood, gentrification, Nuyorican music and dance, and Puerto Rican identity. The interviews paint a complicated picture of the neighborhood and the local community. Caribbean Club regulars confront the new South Side with mixed feelings, as they also reveal a sweet-sour relationship with the past. A recurring subject in the interviews is the owner Toñita, the matriarch of the community, devoted to keep the club open “until she falls”.

Toñita’s is produced at 2013 UnionDocs Collaborative Studio and is a part of UnionDocs’ Living Los Sures project. This multi-faceted project restores Diego Echeverria’s 1984 film Los Sures, makes it accessible to audiences online, remixes local histories through a web documentary platform, and reinvestigates Southside of Williamsburg, Brooklyn today through a collection of short films.

Beyza Boyacıoğlu is a New York, Cambridge and Istanbul based documentary filmmaker, video artist and curator. She was a fellow in 2012-2013 UnionDocs Collaborative Studio in Brooklyn. She curates ‘Fiction-Non’, a documentary series exploring narrative/non-fiction hybrid films, at Maysles Cinema in Harlem. Her work as a video artist has been exhibited in many venues including MoMA (New York), The Invisible Dog Art Center (Brooklyn), NoteOn (Berlin), and Sakıp Sabancı Museum (Istanbul). Sabancı University Visual Arts and Visual Communication Design 2009 graduate Boyacıoğlu currently works as a videographer and a video editor at Harvard University.

www.tonitasdocumentary.com

3D revolution at Sabancı University

For the first time, macro-vascular tissue constructs were 3D printed by using self-supported live cells directly from medical images at the 3D Tissue and Organ Printing Lab.

Sabancı University Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences’ Manufacturing Systems Program professor Bahattin Koç and his team printed an artificial macro-vascular tissue construct using self-supported live cells at the 3D Tissue and Organ Printing Lab, Nanotechnology Research and Application Center (SUNUM).

The ultimate goal of the 3D tissue and organ printing group led by Prof. Bahattin Koç is to use three-dimensional bio-printers to print anatomically correct parts of or an entire tissue/organ by using the patient’s own regular cells or stem cells.  Because the patient’s own cells are used, transplant rejection may not be a problem anymore.

The team was the first in Turkey and the world to use MR data to recreate an anatomically correct aortic tissue construct by using self-supporting live cell printing.  The project team used live cells in a 3D bio-printer to create an anatomically correct human aortic tissue construct directly from medical images.  Different from other techniques, the 3D structures printed by Sabancı University scientists are self-supported in 3D. 

About the 3D Tissue and Organ Printing

The 3D Tissue and Organ Printing Group used live human dermal fibroblast cells as bio-ink to print a part of aortic tissue.  Human blood vessel tissue consists of mainly three types of cells: fibroblast, endothelial and smooth muscle.  Fibroblast cells are the main cell types of connective tissue.  They synthesize the extracellular matrix and collagen needed for tissues.  Endothelium is the thin inner layer of cells of blood vessels.  Smooth muscle cells are found in inner organs such as blood vessels, esophagus and intestines.  The scientists continue their efforts to 3D bio-print macro-vascular tissue constructs with fibroblasts as well as endothelial and smooth muscle cells in a bioreactor.

The interdisciplinary team of researchers and graduate students in manufacturing systems, biology, nanotechnology and materials receive support from Prof. Devrim Gözüaçık and his team from Sabancı University for cell culturing and molecular biology at the initial part of the project, Prof. Mustafa Çulha and his team from Yeditepe University for cell culturing and molecular biology, Prof. Alpay Taralp from Sabancı University  for biomaterials and Prof. Bayram Koç from Gülhane Military Medical Academy in medical areas.

Sabancı University Manufacturing Systems Program Faculty Member Bahattin Koç explains the 3D Tissue and Organ Printing Project:

There are two main reasons why we focus on the aorta: First, the aorta is the largest artery in the body that caries blood to all other vessels.  Since no other blood vessel is as large as the aorta, it is not possible to replace the damaged aorta by an autologous graft.  Synthetic vessels made of plastic (dacron) are currently being used for treatment, but these are never as good as real human blood vessels.  Moreover, if artificial tissue or organs are to be engineered, we would first need blood vessels to supply oxygen and nutrition to them.  An interesting fact that few people know is that Einstein died of an aneurism in the abdominal aorta.  Aneurism is the expansion of a vessel like a balloon.  In later phases, this may cause the vessel to rupture, leading to internal hemorrhage and even death.  As a result of our work, we may be able to produce artificial aorta using the patient’s own regular or stem cells, eliminating transplant rejection.  We are at the beginnings of this work, and clinical studies may take years.

Unlike most of the previous scaffold-based tissue engineering studies, we use live cells as bio-ink in 3D printing.  Using the algorithms we developed, we calculate the optimal paths to print the cells by mimicking the anatomy of the tissue to be produced.  Another difference is that we print anatomically-correct tissues where all cells are self-supported in 3D. We determine how the support hydrogel structures will be used to support the cells.    After determining where and how cells and their support hydrogels are printed, we save these commands to a file, and then use this file to control the bio-printer.

Our overall goal is to obtain 3D print replacement tissues and even organs that is anatomically accurate and able to meet physiological needs.  We are not at the stage of building fully functional organs or tissues yet, but we are working towards this objective.

The previous research work of Bahattin Koç in 3D Tissue and Organ Printing

Sabancı University Manufacturing Systems Engineering faculty Bahattin Koç started his research on Additive Manufacturing or so-called 3D printing 16 years ago.  He has been working on tissue engineering applications of 3D printing for last 7 years, starting at the University at Buffalo (SUNY).  His research included the design and manufacturing of artificial skin and 3D support structures, known as scaffolds, to improve wound healing in a project supported by the US Department of Defense.  Koç has been working on 3D bio-printing of artificial tissues and organs using live cells for over 2 years.

By Melek Sarı

Canan Dağdeviren (M.Sc. in Materials Science and Engineering, 2009) is coming under limelight in the United States with her successful work.

Canan Dağdeviren is working on flexible and bendable electronic devices that can be implanted into the body or on the skin. Her work extends across physics, electronics, chemistry, materials, mechanics and medicine.

Dağdeviren was the top of the list in her field to be entitled to a Fulbright Doctoral Fellowship, which was given for the first time in Turkey in 2009, and was admitted to the Material Science and Engineering Department of The University of Illinois at Urbana, Champaign. 

Her work, published in the prestigious American journal 'Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS),' explains a flexible, ultra-thin device that generates electricity with the motion of the heart, lungs and diaphragm, and can store that energy.

Dağdeviren says that her work in the cardiology center of the Arizona State University hospital yielded good results on sheep, calves and pigs –animals that have hearts that are comparable in size to humans– and that the energy generated from the motion of internal organs was sufficient to run a cardiac pacemaker.

Dağdeviren continued, “This technology stands to disrupt the existing technology, which is cumbersome, costly, and has no mechanical affinity to the heart whatsoever.  Being fully flexible and bendable like paper, the device ensures a close fit with curvaceous organs.  This provides an energy-efficient system that does not hinder the natural motion of the organs.”

Patented by Dağdeviren this week, the device was covered by a multitude of news media, including Smithsonian Magazine, Popular Mechanics, CBS News, LA Times, BBC News, Chemical and Engineering News, New Scientist, and Chemistry World.

Dağdeviren’s idea won her the “International Maria Pia” prize of USD 10,000 in 2012 among 40,000 students.  Starting July, Dağdeviren will work on artificial skin and organs at the Harvard Medical School.

Dağdeviren’s outstanding achievement will make it possible to replace clogged vessels or failing hearts.  The parts developed by Dağdeviren will be fully functional, and be able to generate their own energy by reading parameters that include pressure, temperature and blood flow.

Source http://www.amerikaliturk.com/news/manset/55992-canan-dagdeviren-abdde-is...