The projects of our faculty members at the Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences (FENS) were found eligible for support under the TÜBİTAK 1005 Program.
The purpose of TÜBİTAK 1005 - National New Ideas and Products Research Support Program is to support applied research and/or experimental development projects that will be reduce the technological foreign dependency and/or will increase international competitiveness of Turkey, by developing a national or international new product, process, method, or model.
One of the projects supported under TÜBİTAK 1005 is the project titled “Development and Characterization of A Biosoluble Polymer-based Micro-needle Array:Technological Platform for Intradermal Glucosaminoglycan (GAG), Chondroitin Sulfate (CS), and Hyaluronan Transfer”. The project team led by Bekir Bediz, a Faculty Member at the FENS, includes Technical Expert Büşra Tuğba Çamiç, Researchers Feray Bakan and Meltem Sezen, and Part-time Researcher Güralp Özkoç from the Nanotechnology Research and Application Center (NRAC) of Sabancı University.
Within the framework of the project proposal, the team is planning to create a precise and reproducible production methodology of bio-soluble and bio-compatible micro-needle arrays that can be used to transfer drugs and/or bio-active materials into the skin. The production method developed thanks to the project will allow for production and characterization of prototype micro-needle arrays for the transmission of biological material necessary for the treatment of osteoarthritis.
Another project supported under TÜBİTAK 1005 is the project titled "An Innovative and Domestic Product in Cleft Palate Surgical Skills Training; Anatomical and Modified Cleft Palate Surgical Skills Training Model". Özge Akbulut, a Faculty Member at the FENS, is a researcher in the project team, which also includes Figen Özgür from Hacettepe University as the coordinator, Bahriye Inci Gökalan Kara from Pamukkale University and Murat Kara from Ankara Education and Research Hospital as researchers.
The project will allow for designing a composite training model beyond the simple and expensive products used as a simulation platform in existing training, allowing surgeons in our country and around the world to receive the best training. Product design, prototyping, and sample production for tests will be carried out at Sabancı University, while product testing and the impact assessment of the training that surgeons will receive using the product on their performance will be carried out at Hacettepe University. By using the prepared model in surgical skill training, the risk of complications in patients will be reduced by ensuring that assistants or surgeons practice in a comfortable environment, and more surgeons will be trained on complex techniques.
Cleft lips and palate are the most common congenital anomaly of the head and neck region, with an average incidence of one in 700 births. Although there is no comprehensive study conducted in Turkey, it is estimated that this rate is one in 500 births in our country. It is noted that surgeons need training in issues such as cleft lip-nose repair and correction of complications that may develop during the operation.
The third project to be supported under TÜBİTAK 1005 is FENS Faculty Member Özgür Gürbüz’s project titled “Full Duplex Wi-Fi Device and Novel Full Duplex Radio Technologies”.
Full-duplex transmission is one of the latest wireless technologies with the potential to double the spectrum efficiency by allowing a radio to receive and send signals simultaneously, which makes it one of the alternatives considered for the next wireless local area network standard, Wi-Fi 7. The purpose of this project is to develop an original, domestic full-duplex Wi-Fi network device prototype and two novel full duplex radio prototypes with non-linear and Multi-Input Multi-Output transmission.