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