How To Develop A Computer Science Program

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1 Koç University Electrical and Computer Engineering Graduate Student Resource Guide March 1, 2011

2 Contents College of Engineering 1 The Graduate Program 2 Facts on Graduate Alumni 3 Success Stories 4 Research Areas 6 Research Laboratories 7 Active Research Projects 8 Degree Requirements 9 Faculty 10 Recent Graduates 30 Admission 60 Financial Aid 61 For More Information 62

3 College of Engineering This year marks the tenth anniversary of Koç Engineering as the College of Engineering has admitted first freshman class in the academic year. In 10 years, Koç Engineering has become one of the most dynamic and strongest engineering colleges in Turkey. Our faculty size has reached 43 and is continuing to grow in order to further expand our impact on Turkish higher education, as well as academic and industrial research scene. Our faculty members are among the world leaders in their respective research areas and have come to Koç Engineering with significant post-doc, academic and/or industrial experience from the best institutions worldwide. Our graduate education and research mission is to create new knowledge in order to advance the state of the art in engineering internationally and to stimulate development of innovative technologies of high societal impact for Turkey. Koç Engineering has the best faculty and laboratory resources in Turkey for exploring and learning together. We invite you to join us in this journey to frontiers of science, engineering, and technology for the future. Sincerely, Prof. Dr. A. Murat Tekalp Dean of Engineering 1

4 The Graduate Program 2 Quest for scientific knowledge, learning new technologies, performing cutting edge research in engineering requires high quality graduate education. Turkish industry s growing interest to compete with technologically advanced industries worldwide has increased the demand for skilled engineers who can develop and manage new technologies. Recognizing this need our M.S. program is established to prepare the future engineering leaders who can acquire, synthesize and apply interdisciplinary scientific knowledge to expand the technological foundations of their professions, to better serve the needs of the nation and improve the quality of life in general. The M.S. program is designed to foster applied engineering research in selected critical areas, which can stimulate innovative technologies, and have a beneficial impact on the Turkish industry and economy at large. Our M.S. program is a two-year program with thesis and the medium of instruction is English. The potential opportunities for graduates of these programs are diverse and include: employment in private and government organizations where they can provide the necessary technical expertise and leadership for development, application and management of technology, starting new business ventures in technology innovation and commercialization, continuing their graduate experience with the best Ph.D. programs worldwide. Ph.D. programs emphasize the discovery of new scientific knowledge through extensive research experience. Doctorate studies have the proper time frame to produce competitive research results and educate the future leaders of the profession. Potential opportunities for graduates of this program include academic careers worldwide, leadership positions in research and development organizations, and starting business ventures for commercialization of the new technologies. Applicants to the Ph.D. programs must have a B.S. or M.S. degree in a related area (for specific information, we refer to the websites of the programs you are interested in). Applicants with degrees in other disciplines may be required to take a small number of undergraduate courses to cover deficiencies in their background. Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Electrical and Electronics Engineering The Ph.D. program in Electrical Engineering aims to provide advanced education and a cutting edge research experience in electrical and electronics engineering, or in electrical and computer engineering crossing the boundary of the two disciplines. The focus of this program is excellence in research. Graduates of the program can join industry or continue to work in academia. Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Computer Engineering The Ph.D. program in Computer Engineering aims to provide advanced education and a cutting edge research experience in computer engineering or in electrical and computer engineering crossing the boundary of the two disciplines. The focus of this program is excellence in research. Graduates of the program can join industry or continue to work in academia. Master of Science (M.S.) in Electrical and Computer Engineering The M.S. program in Electrical and Computer Engineering aims to provide advanced education and a cutting edge research experience in one of electrical engineering, or computer engineering, or in electrical and computer engineering crossing the boundary of both disciplines. The focus of this program is excellence in research. Graduates of the program can join industry or continue their research careers in one of Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering or Ph.D. in Computer Engineering programs.

5 Facts on Graduate Alumni Since 2003, we have 70 MS and 8 PhD graduates. A significant tier (49%) of our MS graduates pursue PhD at the top universities of North America and Europe. A significant tier (75%) of our PhD graduates continue their academic careers at competing universities as faculty and post-doctoral researcher. 3 Figure 2: Destination statistics for MS and PhD graduates. Our MS graduates have outstanding publication records with average conference and journal publication counts of 1.93 and 1.11, respectively. Our PhD graduates have outstanding publication records with average conference and journal publication counts of 6.38 and 2.75, respectively. Figure 3: Journal (J) and conference (C) publication count statistics for MS and PhD graduates.

6 Success Stories 4 Tanır Özçelebi Ph.D. Koç University, 2007 My Ph.D. study at Koç University Graduate School provided me with a top-quality international research and education environment, allowing me to grow as an independent and competent scholar. Having access to modern laboratory equipment and excellent research facilities in combination with endless support from worldwide renowned academics was a great experience. Koç University plays significant roles in internationally funded research projects, where graduate students gain knowledge and get to meet experts from academy and industry on a regular basis. Assist. Prof. Tanır Özçelebi, Eindhoven University of Technology Çağlar Ataman Ph.D. Koç University, 2008 M.S. Koç University, 2004 Doktora eğitimi bir bilim insanının kariyeri boyunca gereksinim duyacağı araştırma yöntem ve alışkanlıklarını edindiği, bir nevi kendi alet çantasını oluşturduğu, belki de akademik hayatın en önemli evresidir. Sürekli daha karmaşığa ve yetkine doğru hızla evrilen ve bu süreçte kendini durmaksızın yeniden üreten küresel bilim ortamında her an en uçta kalabilmek bu çantadaki gereçlerin kalitesine dayanır. Sonrasındaki tecrübelerime dayanarak, Koç Üniversitesi ndeki doktora eğitimimin bana iyi bir bilim insanı olabilmek için gerekli tüm teorik ve pratik yetenekleri kazandırmış olduğunu söyleyebilirim. Ortak projeler ve kısa süreli akademik ziyaretler yoluyla, bana daha henüz yüksek lisansımın ilk yılından başlayarak altı yıl boyunca alanımın en önde gelen bilim insanlarıyla ortak çalışma fırsatını sunan tez danışmanım sayesinde de, bu yeteneklerin dünyanın her yerinde etkin bir şekilde kullanılabileceklerinin ayırdına vardım. Bu farkındalığın açtığı yolda yürürken Koç tecrübelerimi yanımda taşımaktan memnuniyet duyuyorum. Çağlar Ataman, Postdoctoral Research Associate, EPFL Ferda Ofli Ph.D. Koç University, 2010 Having completed both my undergraduate and graduate studies at Koç University, I can say confidently that Koç University provided me with everything I would want from a university: livable campus, strong faculty, solid educational background and sophisticated research atmosphere. Having attended several international conferences and workshops during my PhD study, not only was I motivated and rewarded for my work, but I also got exposed to the vast world of science and engineering. Thanks to unfailing guidance and support of my exceptional advisors from whom I have learned much more than just science, I have become a self-confident and enthusiastic researcher. Besides seeking excellence in scientific education and research, Koç University cherishes also the quality of its students life by offering them extra benefits and high-standard facilities such as lodging, transportation, etc.; knowing that living a happy life is crucial for having a successful career. And, I have lived a truly happy life at Koç University! Ferda Ofli, Postdoctoral Research Associate, UC Berkeley, USA

7 Success Stories Tayfun Elmas Ph.D. Koç University, 2010 Koç University created from a passionate coder a world-class researcher. Prof. Serdar Taşıran was not only an advisor but also a life coach to me; his experience, understanding, and patience added considerably to my experience at Koç University. I must give immense gratitude to all faculty and staff for helping me in adapting intensive academic research. Tayfun Elmas, Postdoctoral Researcher, The Parallel Computing Laboratory (ParLab), UC Berkeley, USA 5 Emrah Akyol M.S. Koç University, 2005 Koç University is world renowned with a fascinating research atmosphere. My studies of scalable video compression with Prof. Tekalp was a truly remarkable experience. I owe my enthusiasm and success in research to my time at Koç. Emrah Akyol, Postdoctoral Research Associate, UC Santa Barbara, USA Serhan Işıkman M.S. Koç University, 2008 Halen doktora düzeyinde devam ettiğim Elektrik ve Elektronik mühendisliği eğitimimin lisans ve yüksek lisans derecelerini Koç Üniversitesi nde tamamladım. Alanında lider niteliğindeki araştırmacıları kadrosunda bulundurması ve öğrencilerine lisans seviyesinden başlayarak üst düzey araştırma laboratuarlarında çalışma fırsatı veriyor olması ile Koç Üniversitesi çok ayrıcalıklı bir mühendislik eğitimine sahip. Bu sayede ben de Optik Mikrosistemler Laboratuarında altı yıl boyunca Prof. Dr. Hakan Ürey ile birlikte çalışma fırsatı yakaladım. Lisans döneminde kazanmış olduğum ivme sayesinde, çok verimli ve kendimi hızla geliştirebildiğim bir yüksek lisans süreci geçirdiğimi düşünüyorum. Dr. Ürey ile endüstri ve üniversiteleri buluşturan uluslar arası projelerde çalışarak edindiğim tecrübe ve çok uluslu takım çalışması becerisi, bugün içerisinde bulunduğum uluslar arası araştırma ortamında kendimi daima öncü hissetmemde, kolaylıkla sorumluluk almamda ve duyduğum özgüvende çok büyük rol oynuyor. Serhan Işıkman, Ph.D. Student, UCLA H. Ertan Çetingül M.S. Koç University, 2005 Koç University has become a well-recognized institution and benchmark in graduate study by offering a truly remarkable research environment. At Koç, not only did I learn how to do proper research, but I also had the opportunity to contribute in the field of biometrics with my work on audiovisual speaker identification. In total, I am honored to be a Koç alumnus. H. Ertan Çetingül, Ph.D. candidate in Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD, USA

8 Research Areas 6 Communications Computational Biology & Bioinformatics Computational EM, Waves and Optics Computer Graphics Concurrent systems: Multi-threaded software, multi-core systems Cryptography, Security and Privacy Design Technologies for Hardware, Software and Biological Systems Digital Signal Processing Distributed & Parallel Computing Image Processing & Computer Vision Information Theory Integrated Circuits and Computer-Aided Design for VLSI Intelligent Systems & Machine Learning Micro & Nano Systems (MEMS & NEMS) Multimedia & Networking Multimedia Signal Processing Nanoscale and Molecular Communications Natural Language Processing Peer-to-Peer Systems and Network Protocols Secure Cloud Services Software Engineering: Reliability, Analysis, Verification Speech Processing Underwater Acoustic Communications Wireless Communications Wireless Networks Alper Demir, Alper Erdoğan, Sinem Çöleri Ergen, Özgür Barış Akan, Serdar Kozat Attila Gürsoy, Serdar Taşıran, Deniz Yuret Hakan Ürey, İrşadi Aksun, Alper Demir, Alphan Sennaroğlu Yücel Yemez Serdar Taşıran, Alper Demir, Attila Gürsoy, Öznur Özkasap Alptekin Küpçü Alper Demir, Serdar Taşıran Murat Tekalp, Engin Erzin, Alper Erdoğan, Serdar Kozat, Özgür Barış Akan Attila Gürsoy, Öznur Özkasap Yücel Yemez, Murat Tekalp, Tevfik Metin Sezgin Özgür Barış Akan Alper Demir Tevfik Metin Sezgin, Deniz Yuret, Engin Erzin Hakan Ürey, Özgür Barış Akan Murat Tekalp, Öznur Özkasap, Özgür Barış Akan Murat Tekalp, Engin Erzin, Yücel Yemez, Tevfik Metin Sezgin Özgür Barış Akan Deniz Yuret, Engin Erzin, Serdar Kozat, Tevfik Metin Sezgin Sinem Çöleri Ergen, Öznur Özkasap, Alptekin Küpçü Alptekin Küpçü Serdar Taşıran Engin Erzin Özgür Barış Akan Özgür Barış Akan Sinem Çöleri Ergen

9 Research Laboratories Molecular Engineering and Biotechnology Research Center Hakan Ürey Computational Systems Biology Group (COSBI) Attila Gürsoy, Özlem Keskin Multimedia, Vision & Graphics Laboratory (MVGL) A. Murat Tekalp, Engin Erzin, Yücel Yemez, Metin Sezgin 7 Optical Microsystems Laboratory (OML) Hakan Ürey, Erdem Alaca Micro-Nano Fabrication Laboratory (Clean room) ealaca/links.html, B. Erdem Alaca, Hakan Ürey, Can Erkey, Alper Kiraz, Alphan Sennaro?lu Wireless Communications and Networks Laboratory Sinem Çöleri Ergen Wireless Vehicular Networks Laboratory Sinem Çöleri Ergen Center for Advanced Design Technologies designtech, Alper Demir, Lerzan Örmeci, Serdar Taşıran Intelligent User Interfaces Laboratory Metin Sezgin Networked and Distributed Systems Laboratory (NDSL) Öznur Özkasap, A. Murat Tekalp, Sinem Çöleri Ergen Next-generation Wireless Communications Laboratory (NWCL) Özgür Barış Akan Koc University Photonics Research Center photonicscenter, Alper Demir, Alper Erdoğan, Alphan Sennaroğlu, Hakan Ürey, İrşadi Aksun Advanced Signal Processing and Communications Group aspc, Alper Erdoğan Cryptography, Security, and Privacy Research Group (CRYPTO) Alptekin Küpçü Next Generation Adaptive Signal Processing Laboratory (NGASPL) Serdar Kozat

10 Active Research Projects Intra-Vehicular Wireless Sensor Networks, Sinem Çöleri Ergen, Marie Curie International Reintegration Grants, EUR, SARACEN, Murat Tekalp, EC - FP7, EUR, DIOMEDES, Murat Tekalp, EC - FP7, EUR, Bologna Translation Service, Deniz Yüret, EC - FP7, EUR, HELIUM3D 3-D Laser Display Development, Hakan Ürey, European Commission, EUR, MEMFIS Portable MEMS Spectrometer Development, Hakan EUR, Ürey, European Commission, 3D Dense Shape Correspondence in Sequential Surface Meshes, Yücel Yemez, TÜBİTAK, TL, A new model for representing protein-protein interaction networks, Attila Gürsoy, TÜBİTAK, TL, Doğal Dil İşlemede Kelime Anlam ve Anlamsal İlişkilerinin İstatistiksel Dil Modelleri Kullanarak Belirlenmesi, Deniz Yüret, TÜBİTAK, TL, Vision-based Multimodal Intelligent User interfaces, T. Metin Sezgin, TÜBİTAK Career Award, TL NanoCom: Nano-scale and Quantum Communication Networks, Özgür Barış Akan, TÜBİTAK EEEAG, TL, Energy Efficiency in Peer-to-Peer Network Services, Öznur Özkasap, TÜBİTAK COST, TL, Microvision Research Project 7, Hakan Ürey, MICROVISION INC., USD Speech Driven Upper Body Animation, Engin Erzin, Türk Telekom, TL, Sketch-Based Intelligent Interfaces, T. Metin Sezgin, Türk Telekom, TL, Thermal Camera Development, Hakan Ürey, ASELSAN,

11 Degree Requirements Ph.D. programs: Students can apply to the Ph.D. programs with a B.S. or M.S. degree. The Ph.D. degree requires successful completion of 14 courses beyond the B.S. degree or 7 courses beyond the M.S. degree. All students must pass the Ph.D. Qualifying Examination in the first year after they have been admitted to the Ph.D. program. Students are encouraged to begin research early. Students who have passed the Ph.D. qualifying examination are assisted in matters pertaining to their thesis research by a faculty thesis advisory committee. The research advisor serves as the chair of this committee. The committee meets with the student at least once each semester. Ph.D. students must submit a satisfactory written Ph.D. thesis proposal in their second year of study. At the completion of the Ph.D. research, the students must submit a written Thesis and pass an oral defense to complete the degree requirements. In addition to the two courses listed below, students in this program can take any of the courses listed under the MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering program or under other graduate programs subject to the approval of their advisors in accordance with their research specialty. 9 ECOE Selected Topics in Electrical Engineering ECOE Ph.D. Thesis M.S. program: Applicants must have B.S. or B.A. degrees preferably in engineering or in sciences relevant to the particular degree program. In addition to course work, students are engaged in thesis research or projects. Every student is supervised by an advisor. The M.S. Program with Thesis option requires that the students successfully complete a minimum of 21 credits (or 7 courses) beyond a Bachelor s degree. The students are required to enroll in the M.S. Thesis course. At the completion of the M.S. Thesis, the students have to submit a thesis and pass an oral defense to complete the degree requirements. Students in the M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering program must select at least four (4) courses in one of the following three core lists: Electrical Engineering Core, Computer Engineering Core, or Electrical and Computer Engineering Core. The remaining three (3) courses can be selected from one of these lists or from other graduate courses not listed in one of these lists subject to the approval of their advisors in accordance with their research specialty. In addition, each student has to register for a seminar course, ECOE 590 Seminar. Students working towards their thesis must register for ECOE 595 M.S. Thesis, and students enrolled in non-thesis option should register for ECOE 591 Project.

12 10 Faculty

13 özgür barış akan Associate Professor Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering Ph.D. Georgia Institute of Technology akan Ozgur B. Akan s research interests span a wide spectrum of problem domains mainly in communications and networking. More specifically, Dr. Akan s current research interests are in next-generation wireless (NG) communications, cognitive radio, nanoscale, molecular, and quantum communications, sensor networks, satellite and space communications, underwater communications, signal processing, multimedia communications, information theory. The vision of NG wireless communications is built around the primary goal of enabling the end users to seamlessly communicate with very high bandwidth required for a wide variety of resource-demanding applications such as reliable (and possibly real-time) delivery of large-scale data, interactive audio and video communications, and 3DTV streaming. We work on several important problems of NG wireless communications such as cognitive radio, UWB and radar sensor networks, multimedia communications, underwater acoustic and magneto-inductive communications, nanoradio-based wireless communications, bio-inspired and green communication techniques for NG wireless systems. Dr. Akan also explores an interdisciplinary and young research field of nanoscale communications, which aims to enable collaborative operation of a number of nanomachines towards realizing complex tasks of emerging nanotechnology applications. This objective mandates for new communication theories and techniques devised according to the physical rules governing the nano regime. Hence, we investigate the communication and information theoretical modeling, analysis, and design of novel techniques for nanonetworks with various physical nanoscale communication paradigms including molecular communications, carbon-nanotube (CNT)-based wireless communications, neuro-spike communications. Dr. Akan is an Editor for IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, International Journal of Communication Systems, and Nano Communication Networks Journal. He is an IEEE Senior Member, IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Lecturer, and the Vice President for IEEE Communications Society - Turkey Chapter, and received numerous recognitions including IEEE ComSoc Outstanding Young Researcher Award 2010, IBM Faculty Award (twice in 2010 and 2008), TUBA-GEBIP Award He is the Director of the Next-generation Wireless Communications Laboratory (NWCL). For more information on research and currently open assistantship positions please check the NWCL website, i.e., F. Dressler and O. B. Akan. Bioinspired Networking: From Theory to Practice. IEEE Communications Magazine, November M. Arik and O. B. Akan. Collaborative Mobile Target Imaging in UWB Wireless Radar Sensor Networks. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC), August B. Atakan and O. B. Akan. Carbon Nanotube-based Nanoscale Ad Hoc Networks. IEEE Communications Magazine, June B. Atakan and O. B. Akan. Deterministic Capacity of Information Flow in Molecular Nanonetworks. Nano Communication Networks Journal (Elsevier), March M. T. Isik and O. B. Akan. A Three Dimensional Localization Algorithm for Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks. IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, September Communication Theoretical Model of Neuro-spike Communication Channel between Neuron Cells 11

14 m. irşadi aksun Professor Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering Ph.D. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign iaksun 12 E. P. Karabulut, A. T. Erdogan, and M. I. Aksun. Discrete complex image method with spatial error criterion. IEEE Trans. Microwave Tech., E. P. Karabulut and M. I. Aksun. Characterization of finite photonic crystals with defects. J. Quantum Electronics, A. Alparslan, M. I. Aksun, and K. A. Michalski. Closed-form green s functions in planar layered media for all ranges and materials. IEEE Trans. Microwave Tech., M. Dogan, M. I. Aksun, A. Swan, B. B. Goldberg, and M. S. Unlu. Closed-form representations of field components of fluorescent emitters in layered media. J. Opt. Soc. Am. A., M. I. Aksun, A. Alparslan, E. P. Karabulut, E. Irci, and B. V. Erturk. Determining the effective constitutive parameters of finite periodic structures: Photonic crystals and metamaterials. IEEE Trans. Microwave Tech., T. Onal, M. I. Aksun, and N. Kinayman. A rigorous and efficient analysis of 3d printed circuits: vertical conductors arbitrarily distributed in multilayer environment. IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagation, I believe stating my interests and motivations in a simple sentence would be a time-saver for those who share no common interest with me. Here is what I enjoy working and learning the most electromagnetic waves and light and their interplays with all sorts of materials, natural and artificial, and their applications in engineering. Of course, such a short and general statement needs further discussion, or perhaps more focused explanation, for the interested audience, for whom the following section was prepared. Before getting into the details of the topics of my interests, I would like to state my main motivations for electromagnetism: 1. although the underlying rules of electromagnetism were set more than a century ago, the impact of these rules and the associated wave picture in the development of technology today are more pronounced than ever, like the advances in the areas of wireless communications, computer interconnects, super-resolution optical microscopy, nanophotonics, antennas for communications and optics applications, and microwave and millimeter wave devices; and 2. electromagnetics play major roles in understanding most of the natural phenomena, with the exception of those related to gravity, like rainbow, mirage on hot highways, lightning, extraordinary colors of some butterflies, biological and chemical interactions, and many more. Among the wide variety of challenging research topics in the fields of electromagnetism and optics, here are the topics that I have been working recently: 1. Understanding the wave mechanisms in layered media, as - substrates in electronic and optic systems, - tissues in biological systems, - earth s crust in geological systems, and many more systems can be modeled as layered media; 2. Developing electromagnetic-based accurate and efficient computational tools to help - design microwave, mm-wave and optic components, - design multifunction antennas and printed circuits; 3. Studying the mechanisms of light propagation in any natural or artificial structures, like photonic crystals, metamaterials, and plasmonic nanostructures; 4. Developing nanostructures and particles that shape the flow of light. Electromagnetic spectrum

15 alper demir Associate Professor Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley aldemir Professor Demir s research work concentrates on the mathematical modeling and numerical analysis of nonlinear, stochastic and/or statistical phenomena that arise in physical, biological and engineered systems, a multi-disciplinary endeavor that lies at the intersection of electrical engineering, computer science, applied mathematics and the sciences. Rigorous mathematical models based on first principles and analysis-based, efficient numerical simulation techniques are indispensable tools in forming a fundamental understanding of complex system behavior and in building computational prototypes for the design of various types of engineering systems, especially when nonlinear and stochastic phenomena co-exist and interfere with each other in determining the system behavior. Current research projects include Analysis of all kinds of oscillatory systems that are ubiquitous in electronic, optical, mechanical, biological and other types of systems. We strive to understand oscillatory system behavior in the presence of undesired disturbances such as noise and develop rigorous and efficient numerical techniques for their analysis. Signal and noise propagation in optical fibers. We develop techniques for the estimation of optical fiber communication system performance in the presence of noise, nonlinearities and dispersion. Statistical timing analysis for integrated circuits. We develop analysis techniques for the performance prediction of digital circuits in the presence of manufacturing and environmental variations. Modeling and management of energy consumption in multi-core processor systems. Numerical analysis techniques and software tools for the design of synthetic biological systems, noise in biological systems. A.Demir and A.Sangiovanni- Vincentelli. Analysis and Simulation of Noise in Nonlinear Electronic Circuits and Systems. Kluwer, A.Demir, A.Mehrotra, and J.Roychowdhury. Phase noise in oscillators: A unifying theory and numerical methods for practical characterization. IEEE Trans on Circuits and Systems, May A.Demir. non Monte Carlo formulations and computational techniques for the stochastic nonlinear Schrodinger equation. Journal of Computational Physics, Nov A.Demir. Nonlinear phase noise in optical fiber communication systems. Journal of Lightwave Technology, Aug S.Yaldiz, A.Demir, and S.Tasiran. Stochastic modeling and optimization for energy management in multi-core systems: A video decoding case study. IEEE Trans on Computer-Aided Design of ICs and Systems, July

16 alper erdoğan Associate Professor Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering Ph.D. Stanford University alperdogan 14 Alper Tunga Erdoğan. Globally convergent deflationary instantaneous blind source separation algorithm for digital communication signals. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, 55(5): , May AT Erdoğan. A simple geometric blind source separation method for bounded magnitude sources. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, 54(2): , Feb B Hassibi, AT Erdoğan, and T Kailath. Mimo linear equalization with an h- infinity criterion. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, 54(2): , Feb AT Erdoğan and C Kizilkale. Fast and low complexity blind equalization via subgradient projections. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, 53(7): , Jul AT Erdoğan, B Hassibi, and T Kailath. Mimo decision feedback equalization from an h-infinity perspective. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, 52(3): , Mar Adaptive Signal Processing and Communications Alper Erdoğan s main research area is the adaptive algorithm design and analysis, with a particular emphasis on physical layer multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) communication system design applications. After his Ph.D., he worked as a principal researcher in Virata Corp. (currently Connexant Corp.), where he involved in the design and implementation of adaptive algorithms and hardware for the new generation xdsl modems. He also actively participated in US (T1E1) and International (ITU) DSL standard meetings. Dr. Erdoğan currently serves as an Associate Editor for IEEE Trans. on Signal Processing. Adaptive systems are at the core of many modern engineering applications such as echo-noise cancellation, adaptive equalization/inversion, source separation, peak-to-average ratio adjustment, system identification, direction finding etc. By including an embeded intelligent core, the devices can be designed to learn and adapt to their enviroments. As an illustrative example, current cell phones have the ability to learn the wireless propogation channels and correct the impairments caused by these channels. Increasing demand and growing number of applications have been the major driving forces for the adaptive signal processing research. The adaptation capability can be achieved via use of algorithms that exploit some training data and/or some structural information about the environment and the signals. Central to the adaptive signal processing research is the development of such algorithms to train the adaptive components, which balance high performance - low complexity trade-off in an optimal way. Another central research area in adaptive signal processing is the investigation of the properties of adaptive algorithms such as convergence speed, performance limits, numerical stability and robutsness. These efforts provide a valueable guideline for selecting suitable adaptive algorithms for different applications and inspire the development of new algorithms with better features. One of the emphasis areas of Dr. Erdoğan s research, is the development and analysis of unsupervised adaptive algorithms for MIMO systems. Application span of this problem is quite large including mobile and fiber communications, audio processing, brain monitoring, pattern recognition and even some non-engineering problems such as financial data analysis.

17 sinem çöleri ergen Assistant Professor Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering Ph.D. University of California Berkeley sergen In recent years, we have been witnessing the proliferation of wireless networking to such novel applications as sensor networks, vehicular ad hoc networks and cognitive radio networks. Each of these applications requires the design of specialized protocols based on a model of communication environment, resource constraints of customized hardware platform and application requirements. For example, the design of a communication protocol for a sensor network where the energy efficiency is primary concern is very different from that of a vehicular network where the main goal is to achieve reliable delivery of critical data under high mobility. My research interests are wireless communication and networks with applications in intra-vehicular sensor networks, inter-vehicle communication and cognitive radio. Intra-vehicular wireless sensor networks is a novel wireless network application that aims to enable new sensor technologies to be integrated into vehicles, which would otherwise be impossible using wired means. Intelligent Tire, the project I worked on in Pirelli, is an encouraging example for the use of wireless communication within the vehicle with extremely challenging requirements. The idea is to place sensor nodes inside each tire of an automobile to extract directly from the tire relevant information to improve significantly active control systems. The goal now is to extend this idea to other sensor technologies within the vehicle based on experimental measurements in a real vehicle. Inter-vehicle communication (IVC) networks on the other hand are expected to significantly improve the safety of our transportation systems by making information available beyond the driver s knowledge. Unlike traditional mobile networks, IVC networks have high but more predictable mobility with strict delay and reliability requirements. Cognitive radio is a novel application of wireless networks that aims to improve the current spectrum management techniques. Current policy for spectrum management exclusively license frequency bands to users such that each system has to operate within a limited frequency band. With most of the spectrum being already allocated, it is becoming unlikely that the bandwidth needs of the emerging technologies can be met. Actual measurements however demonstrated that less than 10% of the spectrum is actually used. Cognitive radio network resolves this paradox by opening assigned but sparsely used frequency bands to cognitive radio users provided that interference to the actual licensed devices is kept insignificant. S. C. Ergen, A. Sangiovanni- Vincentelli, X. Sun, R. Tebano, S. Alalusi, G. Audisio, and M. Sabatini. The tire as an intelligent sensor. IEEE Transactions on Computer- Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, 28(7): , July S. Pollin, M. Ergen, S. C. Ergen, B. Bougard, L.V. Perre, I. Moerman, A. Bahai, P. Varaiya, and F. Catthoor. Performance analysis of slotted carrier sense ieee medium access layer. IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 7(9): , September S. C. Ergen and P. Varaiya. Pedamacs: Power efficient and delay aware medium access protocol for sensor networks. IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, 5(7): , July S. Y. Cheung, S. Coleri, B. Dundar, S. Ganesh, C.W. Tan, and P. Varaiya. Traffic measurement and vehicle classification with a single magnetic sensor. Journal of Transportation Research Record, presented in 84th Annual Meeting, Transportation Research Board, (1917), February Towards Intra-Vehicular Wireless Sensor Networks 15

18 engin erzin Associate Professor Department of Computer Engineering Ph.D. Bilkent University eerzin 16 E. Erzin. Improving Throat Microphone Speech Recognition by Joint Analysis of Throat and Acoustic Microphone Recordings. IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing, M. E. Sargın, Y. Yemez, E. Erzin, and A. M. Tekalp. Analysis of Head Gesture and Prosody Patterns for Prosody-Driven Head-Gesture Animation. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Learning, U. Bağcı and E. Erzin. Automatic classification,of musical genres using intergenre similarity. IEEE Signal Processing Letters, H. E. Çetingül, E. Erzin, Y. Yemez, and A. M. Tekalp. Multimodal speaker/speech recognition using lip motion, lip texture and audio. Signal Processing, E. Erzin, Y. Yemez, and A. M. Tekalp. Multimodal speaker identification using an adaptive classifier cascade based on modality reliability. IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, Multimodal recognition system Engin Erzin s research interests include speech processing, multimodal signal processing, pattern recognition and human-computer interfaces. Prof. Erzin is a member of Multimedia, Vision and Graphics Laboratory (MVGL), where he is actively part of many national and international research projects. The speech processing research area, which refers to analysis, synthesis and recognition of speech signals, is playing a key role in the state-of-art digital speech communication and multimedia services. While Internet and wireless telephony is expected to remain one of the most important application for several years to come, the use of speech processing applications, such as automatic speech recognition (ASR), text-to-speech synthesis (TTS), speaker identification/verification, emotion and mood analysis from speech, is expected to increase in multimedia-rich scenarios. the use of speech processing applications is expected to surge in multimedia-rich scenarios Multimodal signal processing refers to combined processing of signals from multiple modalities such as speech, still images, video, and other sources. It plays a key role in the design of future human-computer interfaces and intelligent systems, such as intelligent vehicles. The ultimate goal of human-computer interface research is to develop a machine that is able to identify humans, to analyze and understand them from biometric input signals and to synthesize a human-like output in response, in a similar way to human-to-human communication. The study of relations and correlations between different modality signals plays an important role in effective use of multimodal information. Prof. Erzin s active research activities in the area of multimodal signal processing include speech/speaker recognition, body motion analysis, speech-driven face gesture analysis and synthesis, speaker animation, audio-driven body animation and driver behavior modeling. More details on Prof. Erzin s research activities and current research projects are available under:

19 attila gürsoy Professor Department of Computer Engineering Ph.D. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign agursoy Attila Gürsoy s research interest are in two major areas: computational/systems biology and parallel programming. Parallel Programming and Multi-core Computing The personal computers will likely contain hundreds of cores in the near future. Multi-core computing and parallel programming will be the key challenges that software developers will face in the coming years. Dr. Gürsoy s research is concerned with parallel programming patterns, design and development of better applications, particularly, data mining and machine learning based applications in the area of computational biology. In his research, the benefits of message-driven parallel objects and patterns such as proxy objects have been successfully demonstrated to separate the application logic from the parallelization part. This approach leads to development of parallel applications that are easily composable without significant performance penalties. With the emergence of multi-core personal computers, such techniques will be even more crucial, for example, in applications involving complex human-computer interactions. Computational and Systems Biology Biology is becoming an information driven science. An explosion of biological data including genome sequences and protein structures has been taking place with the recent advances in biotechnology, hence computational methods have become increasingly important to understand biological processes. In collaboration with faculty from chemical and biological sciences, Dr. Gürsoy is investigating how proteins and drugs interact with each other (PRISM project). Proteins are the working horse of the cellular machinery. They are responsible for diverse functions ranging from molecular motors to signaling. Prediction of proteinprotein and protein-drug interactions is crucial for understanding diseases and for drug discovery. By unifying protein interfaces with protein-interaction networks, PRISM project aims to provide insight into the role of proteins within the complex network of interactions. The research integrates various approaches/methods from machine learning, computer graphics, graph theory, and parallel computing in developing new prediction and analysis methods. G Kar, O Keskin, A Gursoy, and R Nussinov. Allostery and population shift in drug discovery. Current Opinion in Pharmacology, 10(6): , N Tuncbag, A Gürsoy, and O Keskin. Identification of computational hot spots in protein interfaces. Bioinformatics, 25(12): , O Keskin, A Gürsoy, B Ma, and R Nussinov. Towards drugs targeting multiple proteins in a systems biology approach. Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry, 7(10): , S Aytuna, A Gürsoy, and O Keskin. Predictions of protein-protein interactions by combining structure and sequence conversation in protein interfaces. Bioinformatics, 21(12): , A Gürsoy and L Kale. Performance and modularity benefits of message-driven execution. Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, 64(4): , Modeling protein interaction networks 17

20 serdar kozat Assistant Professor Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering Ph.D. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign skozat 18 S. S Kozat and A. C. Singer. Universal switching linear least squares prediction. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, 56, S. S Kozat, A. C. Singer,, and Georg Zeitler. Universal piecewise linear prediction via context trees. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, 55, S. S. Kozat, K. Visweswariah, and R. Gopinath. Efficient, low latency adaptation for speech recognition. In Proceedings of ICASSP, S. S. Kozat and A. C. Singer. Universal switching portfolios under transaction costs. In Proceedings of ICASSP, A. C. Singer, S. S. Kozat, and M. Feder. Universal linear least squares prediction: upper and lower bounds. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 48(8), S. S. Kozat, R. Venkatesan, and M. K. Mihcak. Robust perceptual image hashing via matrix invariants. In Proceedings of ICIP, A mixture of different models. Dr. Serdar Kozat s research interests include design and implementation of machine learning algorithms for signal processing problems, concentrating on data prediction, audio/speech processing and mathematical finance. Before joining to Koc University, Dr. Kozat was a Researcher in Pervasive Speech Technologies group at IBM Research, and extensively contributed to next generation speech recognition products of IBM Research. Recently, the field of signal processing experienced dramatic growth, due to the proliferation of new and exciting applications ranging from the Internet, wireless communications to multimedia and quantitative finance. Signal processing systems have become an integral part of information and communication industries as a result of advances in device technology. As the range of environments that these applications are expected to work are increasing, there is now a greater need for systems that can operate efficiently in the presence of a wide range of environmental uncertainties and volatility; such as digital communication in urban areas and speaker interfaces in mobile environments. To answer these challenges, Dr. Kozat investigates signal processing systems that self-improve and adapt to their respective environment. These self adaptive algorithms can provide efficient solutions to several key problems in adaptive signal estimation, speech recognition and multi-modal signal processing systems. A promising approach is to design merging strategies. In this framework, we merge decisions coming from a family of strategies by comparing the relative performance of each strategy on the task at hand. Example model combinations include language model combination for speech recognition, merging different modalities or attributes in multimedia signal processing, especially for audio-visual applications. This interdisciplinary research that leverages ideas from information theory and machine learning into signal processing, has the promise of generating precisely robust strategies that are crucial for next generation signal processing systems. As an exciting and promising research direction, Dr. Kozat also investigates robust perceptual hashing and randomized feature extraction algorithms for speech, audio and image signals. In perceptual hashing (or feature extraction), we map multimedia signals to relatively short representations in order to facilitate comparisons, searches, data mining and authentication. A multimedia hash function is desired to produce similar hash values for perceptually similar media inputs. These extracted features are then used to model medical signals, such as ECG, spoken language dialogs or images and used for transmission with side information in speech and video coding applications.

21 alptekin küpçü Assistant Professor Department of Computer Engineering Ph.D. Brown University akupcu A young robber demands the store owner put everything in a bag and hand it to him. The owner puts everything except a bottle of liquor into the bag. The robber demands the liquor too, but the owner refuses. The robber asks why the owner is refusing, and so the owner tells him that he does not believe the robber is over 18. The robber then hands over his identification card to the owner in order to prove he is over 18. The owner looks at the ID, then puts the bottle in the bag, and then gives the ID card to the robber back. The robber runs away, but two hours later the police catches him because the store owner obtained all the necessary information from the robber s ID card. The moral of the story is that to prove our age, we reveal much more information about ourselves than necessary. With cryptography, using a concept called zero knowledge proofs, one can prove that (s)he is over 18 without even revealing her/his age (and any other information), therefore protecting her privacy. Here are some of my projects: Many people store their data on cloud servers such as Dropbox, Google Documents, and Microsoft Skydrive. Yet, none of these cloud storage providers offer any guarantee on the security of your data. Using cryptography, one can provide guaranteed security against such modifications or deletions of your data. In cryptography, we deal with adversaries acting maliciously. In game theory, we deal with rational participants who are acting selfishly. In outsourced computation (e.g., SETI@Home, Rosetta@Home, Electric Sheep), combining game-theoretic and cryptographic techniques can provide guarantees on the correctness of the result while performing minimal work. I am sure you have used BitTorrent (or alternatives) at some point in your life. One reason that BitTorrent is not as fast as it can be is that there are free-rides who download much more than they upload. Using fair exchange techniques, we can ensure that everyone contributes to the system as much as they download. In online commerce, we provide the merchant with our credit card number, who can then misuse that information to buy other stuff (identity fraud). Besides, the credit card company knows exactly how we spend our money (no privacy). Instead, if we use e-cash, which is the digital equivalent of cash (untraceable and anonymous), then we solve both of the issues. A. Küpçü. Efficient Cryptography for the Next Generation Secure Cloud. Lambert Academic Publishing, A. Küpçü and A. Lysyanskaya. Usable optimistic fair exchange. In CT-RSA, A. Küpçü and A. Lysyanskaya. Optimistic fair exchange with multiple arbiters. In ESORICS, C. Erway, T. Hinkle, A. Küpçü, A. Lysyanskaya, and S. Meiklejohn. Zkpdl: Enabling efficient implementation of zero-knowledge proofs and electronic cash. In USENIX Security, C. Erway, A. Küpçü, C. Papamanthou, and R. Tamassia. Dynamic provable data possession. In ACM CCS, M. Belenkiy, M. Chase, C. Erway, J. Jannotti, A. Küpçü, and A. Lysyanskaya. Incentivizing outsourced computation. In NetEcon, M. Belenkiy, M. Chase, C. Erway, J. Jannotti, A. Küpçü, A. Lysyanskaya, and E. Rachlin. Making p2p accountable without losing privacy. In ACM WPES, Cryptography can make unimaginable things possible

22 öznur özkasap Associate Professor Department of Computer Engineering Ph.D. Ege University oozkasap 20 Ö. Özkasap, M. Çağlar, E.Ş. Yazıcı, and S. Küçükçifci. An analytical framework for self-organizing peer-topeer anti-entropy algorithms. Performance Evaluation Journal, İ.E. Akkuş, Ö. Özkasap, and M.R. Civanlar. Peer-to-peer multipoint video conferencing with layered video. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 34(1), Ö. Özkasap, Z. Genç, and E. Atsan. Epidemic-based reliable and adaptive multicast for mobile ad hoc networks. Computer Networks, Ö. Özkasap, M. Çağlar, E. Çem, E. Ahi, and E. Iskender. Stepwise fair-share buffering for gossip-based peer-to-peer data dissemination. Computer Networks, E. Atsan and Ö. Özkasap. SCALAR: Scalable data lookup and replication framework for mobile ad-hoc networks. In WWASN, ICDCS 08, modeling P2P algorithms Öznur Özkasap s research is concerned with distributed computing systems, peer-to-peer (P2P) services, reliable multicast protocols, biologically-inspired distributed algorithms, distributed real-time systems, mobile ad hoc and computer networks. Prof. Özkasap conducts research projects, funded by national and international sources, as part of the Networked and Distributed Systems Laboratory. P2P networking has emerged as a promising paradigm for building distributed services and applications. Unlike traditional centralized models, P2P systems provide scalable, fault-tolerant and self-organizing operational environment. They offer benefits for information dissemination, sharing, efficient collaboration, real-time communication, and loadbalancing. A self-organizing system consists of a large number of components that function autonomously and interact via basic and local rules. The individual components do not depend on centralized mechanisms and they are capable of tolerating the failures of the other components. The global behavior become apparent from the local interactions and such systems are often inspired by biological phenomena. In this endeavor, bio-inspired approaches have become an appealing alternative for building self-organizing P2P applications in distributed settings. Developments in P2P and bio-inspired paradigms are relevant for several areas in information and communication technology including networks and protocols, mathematical models and tools, media streaming, energy efficiency, grid and cloud computing, and security mechanisms. However, designing efficient distributed algorithms, protocols and services is not straightforward and an active area of research. As part of the current projects, our goal is to investigate and develop a framework of techniques by applying P2P and bio-inspired principles to significant research problems in distributed systems. The areas that we study include (i) bio-inspired P2P content dissemination, (ii) energy efficiency in P2P network services, (iii) P2P media streaming, (iv) self-organizing data replication in mobile ad hoc networks and (v) performance measurement tools for scalable bio-inspired models.

23 alphan sennaroğlu Professor Department of Departments of Physics and Electrical and Electronics Engineering Ph.D. Cornell University asennar My research focuses on the development of novel application-specific solid-state lasers for biomedical imaging, microscopy, spectroscopy, and materials processing. Projects mainly involve experimental work and modeling. Students working on these projects gain experience in the design of optical systems, design and experimental construction of laser resonators, building and characterization of solid-state lasers, and operating these lasers in different regimes to generate constant or pulsed output. The solidstate laser systems we are interested in span the wavelength range of nm. Some of the on going projects include: 1. Generation of femtosecond pulses from highly efficient, low-threshold solid-state lasers near 1300 nm. We are particularly interested in developing low-cost, 1300-nm femtosecond lasers because of their potential applications in tissue imaging. These wavelengths suffer far less scattering in comparison with widely used Ti:sapphire lasers near 800 nm and can be used to generate images at greater tissue depths. Specific application areas of this laser system include optical coherence tomography and multi-photon microscopy. 2. Femtosecond pulse generation using multi-pass cavities. These are lasers with cavity lengths far longer than standard lasers. The typical cavity lengths can be more than 10 meters. Extension of the cavity length leads to direct scaling of the output energy without the need for amplifiers. In practice, multi-pass resonator configurations are used in achieving the long effective lengths in a compact arrangement. We are working on the design of such cavities and their application in efficient femtosecond pulse generation from different solid-state lasers. 3. Development of glass lasers. Here, the motivation lies in the fact that manufacturing of laser-active glasses is far simpler and more cost effective than that of crystals. Furthermore, bulk glass-based lasers can be used in the development of fiber lasers. We do spectroscopic characterization of potential glass hosts and evaluate their laser performance by doping different types of rare-earth ions. We have so far demonstrated lasing in neodymium-doped telluride glasses near the wavelength of 1064 nm. Alphan Sennaroğlu. Solid-State Lasers and Applications. Ed., CRC Press (Taylor and Francis Group),, Sava Sakadic, Ümit Demirbaş, Thorsten R. Mempel, Anna Moore, Svetlana Ruvinskaya, David A. Boas, Alphan Sennaroğlu, Franz X.Kaertner, and James G. Fujimoto. Multi-photon microscopy with a low-cost and highly efficient Cr:LiCAF laser. Optics Express, 16: , A. Sennaroğlu, Ü. Demirbaş, A. Kurt, and M. Somer. Direct Experimental Determination of the Optimum Chromium Concentration in Continuous-Wave Cr2+:ZnSe Lasers. IEEE J. Selected Topics in Quantum Electron., 13: , Ü. Demirbaş and A. Sennaroğlu. Intracavity-pumped Cr2+:ZnSe laser with ultrabroad tuning range between 1880 and 3100 nm. Opt. Lett., 31: , H. Kalaycıoğlu, H. Çankaya, G. Özen, L. Övecoğlu, and A. Sennaroğlu. Lasing at 1065 nm in bulk Nd3+-doped telluride-tungstate glass. Opt. Commun., 281: , Koç University Laser Research Laboratory (Picture by Arif Mostafazadeh)

24 t. metin sezgin Assistant Professor Department of Computer Engineering Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology mtsezgin 22 T. M. Sezgin and R. Davis. Sketch interpretation using multiscale models of temporal patterns. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 27(1), T. M. Sezgin and P. Robinson. Affective video data collection using an automobile simulator. In ACII, volume 4738 of LNCS, X. Pan, M. Gillies, T. M. Sezgin, and C. Loscos. Expressing complex mental states through facial expressions. In ACII, volume 4738 of LNCS, F. Sezgin and T. M. Sezgin. On the statistical analysis of feigenbaum constants. Journal of the Franklin Institute, 343, T. M. Sezgin and R. Davis. HMMbased efficient sketch recognition. In IUI 05: Proc. of the 10th Int. Conf. on Intelligent user interfaces, Can you write a program that can recognize a handdrawn circiut diagram or an architect s drawing of her latest design? Can you build an intelligent computer system that can recognize human emotions? Professor Sezgin s areas of interest include multimodal and intelligent human-computer interfaces; affective interfaces; pen-based computing; computer graphics and animation; machine learning and computer vision applications. The overarching theme of Dr. Sezgin s research is enabling people to interact with computers in a more natural fashion by combining techniques from computer vision, machine learning, computer graphics, human-computer interaction and psychology. Prof. Sezgin completed his doctoral work at MIT, where he worked on sketch recognition technologies for intelligent pen-based human-computer interfaces. Sketch recognition, can be described as the automated parsing and recognition of structured hand-drawn diagrams (e.g., technical drawings, circuit diagrams, architectural drawings). Sketch recognition is fundamentally a pattern recognition problem like speech recognition and face recognition, but poses additional challenges due to its inherent free-form nature, thus it is a relatively unexplored fertile research area. Upon the completion of his PhD, Prof. Sezgin joined Cambridge University where he started to work on affective (emotion-aware) user interfaces. Display and recognition of emotions is an essential component of face-to-face human communication. Yet, computers lack the social intelligence needed to recognize or reason about emotions of human users. Although humans seem to be good at recognizing emotions by reading facial expressions and body language, even very simple tasks such as finding faces in an image are very hard for computers. Dr. Sezgin s work focuses on combining computer vision and machine learning techniques to build core recognition algorithms for emotion recognition, and also explores potential application grounds for the emotion recognition tecnologies in areas such as active driver monitoring in automobiles and animation of computer graphics characters. Sketch recognition example: the freehand device drawing is automatically converted to a CAD model.

25 serdar taşıran Assistant Professor Department of Computer Engineering Ph.D. University of California at Berkeley stasiran Software is hard, says noted computer scientist Don Knuth, a Turing Award winner. From now on I shall have significantly greater respect for every successful software tool that I encounter [...] The creation of good software demands a significantly higher standard of accuracy than [...] other things do, and it requires a longer attention span than other intellectual tasks. In fact, verifying that software is free of bugs is an undecidable problem. This means there is no amount of testing that can prove that a software system does not have a bug. Yet, we trust our data, money, and even lives on software each day. It is of critical importance to make sure that software is bug free. Prof. Taşıran s research group investigates formal (mathematical) and algorithmic methods for verifying and debugging software and develops software tools which find bugs in other software. The recipients of the 2007 Turing Award were formal verification researchers in recognition of the increasing importance of this field. The primary focus of Dr. Taşıran s group is concurrent systems. Concurrent systems are becoming ubiquitous, with the spread of multicore processors and multithreaded software. In Dr. Taşıran s group, students have developed algorithms and tools that have been successful in finding bugs in industrial-scale concurrent software. These algorithms and tools have been developed in close collaboration with the Software Reliability Research group at Microsoft Research ( and integrated into verification tools there (Chess: Spec#). The Goldilocks race-detection algorithm was implemented in the Kaffe Java Virtual Machine. Some of these tools and techniques are now included in the curricula at American and European universities. Verification research is not only important and practical but also fun. Finding bugs in software is like solving riddles. Developing a software tool that finds bugs is like building a riddle-solver, and building the theory behind such a tool is like proving that your riddle-solver is clever and efficient enough to solve a certain class of riddles. Because of this, a researcher in this field ends up developing both good software development skills and mathematical skills. For more information, see T Elmas, S Qadeer, and S Taşıran. Goldilocks: A race- and transactionaware java runtime. ACM Conf. on Prog. Lang. Design and Implementation, PLDI 07, 42(6), T Elmas, S Taşıran, and S Qadeer. Vyrd: Verifying concurrent programs by runtime refinement-violation detection. ACM Conf. on Prog. Lang. Design and Implementation, PLDI 05, 40(6):27 37, S Taşıran, Y Yu, and B Batson. Linking simulation with formal verification at a higher level. IEEE Design and Test of Computers, Nov-Dec R Joshi, L Lamport, J Matthews, S Taşıran, M Tuttle, and Y Yu. Checking cache-coherence protocols with tla+. Formal Methods in System Design, 22(2): , T Henzinger, S Qadeer, S Rajamani, and S Taşıran. An assume-guarantee rule for checking simulation. ACM Trans. on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS), 24(1):51 64, JAN Multi-core processors and concurrency are everywhere. Techniques for writing and verifying concurrent software are hot research topics. 23

26 murat tekalp Professor Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering Ph.D. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute mtekalp 24 A. Murat Tekalp, Engin Kurutepe, and M. Reha Civanlar. 3dtv over ip: End-to-end streaming of multi-view video. IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, 24(6):77 87, Nov A. Murat Tekalp, Engin Kurutepe, and M. Reha Civanlar. Client-driven selective streaming of multi-view video for interactive 3dtv. IEEE Trans. on Circ. and Syst. for Video Technology, 17(11): , Nov G.B. Akar, A.M. Tekalp, C. Fehn, and M.R. Civanlar. Transport methods in 3dtv-a survey. Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, IEEE Transactions on, 17(11): , Nov M.E. Sargın, Y. Yemez, E. Erzin, and A.M. Tekalp. Audiovisual synchronization and fusion using canonical correlation analysis. Multimedia, IEEE Transactions on, 9(7): , Nov E. Akyol, A.M. Tekalp, and M.R. Civanlar. A flexible multiple description coding framework for adaptive peer-to-peer video streaming. Selected Topics in Signal Processing, IEEE Journal of, 1(2): , Aug Multimedia laboratory: mvgl Research Interests: 3D Media over the Future Internet refers to 3D video transport over the Internet of the future. We are only in the beginnins of the digital multimedia revolution. As the bandwidth of various wired and wireless networks continue to expand, and better 3D capable displays and 3D content become available, real-life like 3D multimedia communication and entertainment services, which we refer as 3D experiences over IP, will be introduced towards realizing the 3D Internet of the future. Since large amounts of data is involved in the transmission of such 3D experiences, distributed transport scenarios, such as cooperative streaming and broadcast, should be considered where both wired and wireless peers may partially or fully cooperate among each other. In a cooperative scenario, each peer may use some of its resources in order to contribute to the transport of content to other peers. The goal of this project is to propose a new adaptive framework for time-varying, cooperative, wired and wireless 3D multimedia transport architectures and protocols with dynamic level of cooperation between peers depending on the network state and application requirements. Multi-modal Human-Computer Interaction refers to human-computer interfaces using audio, video, as well as other possible modalities, similar to human-to-human interfaces. Such interfaces will rely on multimodal models of human communication, such as the joint dynamics of facial expressions/upper body gestures and speech content/prosody. Hence, research towards developing innovative multimodal audio-visual analysis and modelling techniques and tools forms an integral part of this project. Another goal of this project is to build a large, carefully annotated, multicultural, multimodal database of speech-gesture signals to facilitate fast and efficient linguistic and/or cultural adaptation across the world. Motion-compensated Video Filtering and Superresolution refers to video filtering to achieve better visual quality for commercial applications or better information extraction for forensic applications. Examples of commercial applications include conversion of 50/60 Hz 1080I (interlaced) video to 50/60 Hz 1080P (progressive) video for HDTV sets. Examples of forensic applications include face recognition from low quality surveillance videos. Road and Traffic Analysis from Video can be used for traffic monitoring with fixed road-side cameras or for driver warning systems with on-board cameras looking outward the windshield.

27 hakan ürey Professor Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering Ph.D. Georgia Institute of Technology hurey Hakan Ürey s main research focus is the development of novel enabling micro/nano optical and electro-mechanical system (NEMS/MEMS) technologies, and 3D displays. The research is mostly coupled with the industry and focus on a number of applications including cell-phone projectors (classified as pico-projectors), thermal imaging cameras for night-vision, ultra-miniaturized spectroscopy instruments for chemical and biological analysis, disposable bio-nano sensors, and novel 3D displays. Hakan Ürey is the director of the Optical Microsystems Laboratory ( The research carried out at OML is highly innovative and in addition to a number of scientific papers, it resulted in a number of US and European patents where MS and Ph.D. students are also co-inventors. There are several technologies originated from OML that are already licensed to industrial partners for commercial product development including Microvision Inc. (USA), Fraunhofer IPMS (Germany), and Aselsan (Ankara). The figure below shows the picture of a Silicon wafer with various micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) devices that are fabricated in clean room environment by Optical Microsystems Laboratory researchers. Amog the devices are MEMS scanners that are used as rotating mirrors for projection displays; MEMS dynamic grating structures that are used as compact spectrometers; and MEMS dynamic stages that are integrated with microlens arrays for highresolution imaging. OML has extensive design (software tools) and experimental testing capabilities for optical and micro/nano mechanical systems. Dr. Ürey is also co-director of the clean room facilities established at Koç University that is suitable for microfabrication. OML currently has 16 members (1 researcher, 1 technician, 2 Ph.D. students, 7 MS students, and 5 undergraduate assistants) and looking for 2 post-doctoral researchers and several MS/Ph.D. students. O. Ferhanoğlu, M. Toy, and H. Ürey. Two-wavelength grating interferometry for mems sensors. IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, 19: , P. Benzie, J. Watson, P. Surman, I. Rakkolainen, K. Hopf, H. Ürey, V. Sainov, and C. Kopylow. A survey of 3- dtv displays: Techniques and technologies. IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for video Technology, 17: , A. Akatay and H. Ürey. Design and optimization of microlens array based high resolution beam steering system. Optics Express, 15(8): , C. Ataman, H. Ürey, and A. Wolter. MEMS-based fourier transform spectromer. J. Micromechanics and Microengineering, 16: , A. Yalçinkaya, H. Ürey, T. Brown, T. Montague, and R. Sprague. Twoaxis electromagnetic microscanner for high resolution displays. IEEE J. Microelectromechanical Systems, 15(4): , AUG Optical MEMS Devices

28 yücel yemez Associate Professor Department of Computer Engineering Ph.D. Boğaziçi University yyemez 26 Y. Sahillioglu and Y. Yemez. 3d shape correspondence by isometrydriven greedy optimization. Proc. Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, CVPR 10, Y. Yemez and Y. Sahillioglu. Coarseto-fine surface reconstruction from silhouettes and range data using mesh deformation. Computer Vision and Image Understanding, C. Akgul, B. Sankur, Y. Yemez, and F. Schmitt. 3d model retrieval using probability density-based shape descriptors. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, M. Sargin, Y. Yemez, E. Erzin, and M. Tekalp. Analysis of head gesture and prosody patterns for prosodydriven head-gesture animation. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Dr. Yemez s current research is focused on computer vision, graphics and multimodal signal processing. Multimodal signal processing plays a key role in the design of future human-computer interfaces. The ultimate goal of human-computer interface research is to develop a machine that is able to identify humans, to analyze and understand them from biometric input signals and to synthesize a human-like output in response, in a similar way to humanto-human communication. The joint use of multiple modalities derived from biometric signals, in particular from audiovisual sensors such as voice, face, fingerprint, iris, gestures, body and head motion, gait, speech, lip movements, reinforces recognition, provides robustness and yields more natural interaction with computers. Speech recognition, person identification, speaker recognition, body motion analysis, speech-driven face gesture analysis and synthesis, speaker animation, audio-driven body animation are some of the active research areas in the MVGL (Multimedia Vision and Graphics Lab.). Computer graphics is mainly concerned with creation, processing and rendering of 3D digital scene representations and object models. These representations can be purely computer-generated or a combination of graphical models and real world images and videos registered together using 3D computer vision. Vision technologies can create replica of real world, not only the geometry and appearance of objects and surfaces but also their motion and behavior. Dr. Yemez is actively involved with research activities addressing these problems, especially those which are common to 3D vision and graphics. His topics of interest include scene capture, surface reconstruction, shape from structured light, active laser scanning, shape from multicamera, time-varying mesh representations, mesh simplification, progressive representations, point-based surface representation, content-based retrieval of 3D objects, 3D shape correspondence, multi-camera motion capture, mesh deformation, animation and tracking. 3D shape correspondence: Finding semantically similar points between different object models is a joint problem for computer vision and graphics.

29 emine yilmaz Assistant Professor Department of Computer Engineering Ph.D. Northeastern University eyilmaz The focus of Emine Yilmaz s research lies in the field of information retrieval and world wide web. Her research is mainly guided by principles from statistics, machine learning and information theory. The models and algorithms she builds based on these principles are motivated by problems of practical importance and their applicability is always validated via extensive experiments. After the invention of the world wide web and the increase of available information in digital form, search engines have received significant attention. Most commercial web search engines are machine learning systems trained over some number of predefined queries. The training of a search engine is an iterative procedure where at each iteration (1) given a collection of documents, the search engine is run over a particular query, producing a ranked list of documents, (2) the documents in the document collection are judged as relevant or nonrelevant to the query by a human relevance assessor, (3) given the relevance judgments, the quality of the ranked list of documents is evaluated with respect to a predefined evaluation measure, and (4) the search engine is tuned to optimize for the given evaluation measure. Prof. Yilmaz s research mainly focuses on problems associated with different parts of this iterative procedure. Some of the methods she developed have been adopted by the TREC (Text REtrieval Conference), held by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Another field that has recently gained significant attention is crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is the act of outsourcing tasks to an undefined, large group of people or community (a crowd), through an open call as opposed to the traditional way of assigning these tasks to an employee or a contractor. With the invention of platforms such as Mechanical Turk, crowdsourcing tasks to a broad range of people has become much easier. Prof. Yilmaz has also bee investigating the advantage of crowdsourcing over the traditional way of assigning tasks to a single employee/contractor. She has been organizing several workshops in the area. Emine Yilmaz and Stephen Robertson. On the choice of effectiveness measures for learning to rank. Information Retrieval Journal, 13(3): , Javed A. Aslam, Evangelos Kanoulas, Virgiliu Pavlu, Stefan Savev, and Emine Yilmaz. Document selection methodologies for efficient and effective learning-to-rank. In Proceedings of the 32nd Annual International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, pages , Emine Yilmaz, Javed A. Aslam, and Stephen Robertson. A new rank correlation coefficient for information retrieval. In Proceedings of the 31st Annual International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, pages , Emine Yilmaz and Javed A. Aslam. Estimating average precision with incomplete and imperfect judgments. In Proceedings of the 2006 ACM CIKM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, pages , Construction of a Modern Search Engine

30 deniz yuret Assistant Professor Department of Computer Engineering Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology 28 Deniz Yuret. Smoothing a tera-word language model. In ACL, Deniz Yuret. Word sense disambiguation by substitution. In SemEval-2007: 4th International Workshop on Semantic Evaluations, Roxana Girju, Deniz Yuret, et al. Classification of semantic relations between nominals. In SemEval-2007: 4th International Workshop on Semantic Evaluations, Joakim Nivre, Deniz Yuret, et al. The CoNLL 2007 shared task on dependency parsing. In EMNLP-CoNLL, Deniz Yuret and Ferhan Türe. Learning morphological disambiguation rules for Turkish. In HLT-NAACL 06, Deniz Yuret. Dependency parsing as a classification problem. In Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning (CoNLL-X), Different interpretations of the sentence I saw the man on the hill with a telescope. In 1976 John McCarthy, one of the founders of artificial intelligence, wrote a memo discussing the problem of getting a computer to understand a story from the New York Times: A 61-year old furniture salesman, John J. Hug, was pushed down the shaft of a freight elevator yesterday in his downtown Brooklyn store by two robbers while a third attempted to crush him with the elevator car because they were dissatisfied with the $1,200 they had forced him to give them. McCarthy suggested that a real understanding of this story would entail being able to answer questions like: Who was in the store when the events began? Who had the money at the end? Did Mr. Hug know he was going to be robbed? Does he know now that he was robbed? Answering these questions is still beyond the state of the art in natural language processing, because they require common sense knowledge in addition to the text of the story. In fact the problems associated with answering questions only based on the text of the story are only beginning to be solved on a large scale: When and where was Mr. Hug pushed? Who forced who to give $1,200 to whom? Did the money satisfy the robbers? To achieve an understanding at this level, we need to address linguistic problems like word sense disambiguation ( push has 15 senses), named entity recognition (Mr. Hug = John J. Hug), anaphora resolution (him = John J. Hug), parsing (who did what to whom?), semantic relation identification (dissatisfied with $1,200 = $1,200 did not satisfy). The figure across illustrates the main challenge: the ambiguity present in most natural language expressions. Our group studies statistical machine learning methods to address these problems with the eventual goal of natural language understanding by machines.

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32 30 Recent Graduates

33 t. berkin abanoz Ph.D. Student at Boston University, USA M.S. Koç University, 2008 Advisor: Murat Tekalp T. Berkin Abanoz. Optimal selection of encoding configuration for scalable and multiple description video coding. Master s thesis, Koç University, It is well-known that the wider the range of extraction points a scalable bitstream supports, the lower the compression efficiency at these extraction points. Moreover, this compression efficiency generally varies according to what combination of scalability types are used to support this range of extraction points as specified by the encoding configuration.. T. B. Abanoz and A. M. Tekalp. Optimal selection of encoding configuration for scalable video coding. In IEEE ICIP 2007, San Antonio, ahmet ata akatay Ph.D. student at EPFL, Switzerland M.S. Koç University, 2006 Advisor: Hakan Ürey Ahmet Ata Akatay. Beam steering using microlens arrays. Master s thesis, Koç University, Laser scanners are enabling key technologies and have wide spread applications in displays, imaging/detection systems and information technologies. The most common beam steering systems operate by reflection from a torsionally scanning mirror, or refraction at a displaced lens system, or by phase modulation.. Ata Akatay and Hakan Ürey. Design and optimization of microlens array based high resolution beam steering system. Optics Express, 15(8): , Ata Akatay, Çağlar Ataman, and Hakan Ürey. High-resolution beam steering using microlens arrays. Optics Letters, 31(19): , October A. Akatay, H. Suyal, A. J. Waddie, M.R. Taghizadeh, and H. Ürey. Comparative performance analysis of 100arrays: fabricated by various methods in micro-optics, vcsels, and photonic interconnects: Fabrication, packaging, and integration. Proc. SPIE, 6185, April Ata Akatay,, Hakan Ürey, and Çağlar Ataman. Mikromerçek dizinleri ile yüksek Çözünürlüklü lazer tarayıcı. In 7. Ulusal Elektro-Optik ve Fotonik Çalışma Toplantısı, Bilkent Üniv, İstanbul, December 2005.

34 ferit ozan akgül Ph.D. Student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute M.S. Koç University, 2004 Advisor: Oğuz Sunay 32 Ferit Ozan Akgül. Statistical QoS assurances for wireless packet data and integration methodologies for 3G/WLAN. Master s thesis, Koç University, Rapid developments in wireless technologies require the networks of tomorrow be more versatile and able to handle different types of load with adaptive approaches. The study involved in this thesis focuses on the QoS aware resource management algorithms for the recently standardized IS-856 data only cellular system.. Ferit O. Akgül and M. Oğuz Sunay. Enhancing 3G high speed wireless data performance through utilization of 3G-WLAN system integration: A cross-network, cross-layer approach. Personal Wireless Communications Journal, Ferit O. Akgül and M. Oğuz Sunay. Journal of Internet Engineering, QoS-aware scheduling for 3G wireless packet data systems. Ferit O. Akgül and M. Oğuz Sunay. Energy efficient utilization of IEEE hot spots in 3G wireless packet data networks. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Ferit O. Akgül and M. Oğuz Sunay. Statistical QoS assurances for high speed wireless communication systems. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Ferit O. Akgül and M. Oğuz Sunay. Efficient resource allocation for statistical QoS assurances in hdr based wireless packet data. In Proceedings of the IEEE PIMRC 04 Conference, Barcelona, Spain, September istemi ekin akkuş Ph.D. student at University of Toronto M.S. Koç University, 2007 Advisor: Reha Civanlar, Öznur Özkasap İstemi Ekin Akkuş. Peer to peer multipoint video conferancing using layered video. Master s thesis, Koç University, A new peer-to-peer architecture for multipoint video conferencing using layered video coding with two layers at the end hosts is presented. The system targets end points with low bandwidth network connections (single video in and out) and enables them to create a multipoint conference without any additional networking and computing resources than what is needed for a point-to-point conference.. İ. E. Akkuş, Ö. Özkasap, and M. R. Civanlar. Multi-objective optimization for peer-to-peer multipoint video conferencing using layered video. In PV 2007 (16th International Packet Video Workshop), Lausanne, November İ.E. Akkuş, Ö. Özkasap, and M. R. Civanlar. Peer-to-peer multipoint video conferencing using layered video. In IEEE (International Conference on Image Processing) ICIP, Atlanta, İ. E. Akkuş, Ö. Özkasap, and M. R. Civanlar. Secure transmission of video on an end system multicast using public key cryptography. In MRCS 06, Multimedia Content Representation, Classification and Security, volume 4105 of LNCS, pages , Istanbul, 2006.

35 emrah akyol Ph.D. Student at University of California, Santa Barbara M.S. Koç University, 2005 Advisor: Murat Tekalp Emrah Akyol. Adaptive scalable video coding. Master s thesis, Koç University, This thesis is composed of three main parts which include three contributions in slightly different fields, all lying on the same framework: Adaptive Scalable Video Coding. First part is about integration of motion compensated temporal filtering (MCTF), the basis for temporal scalability in scalable video coding methods, to the latest non-scalable video compression standard, i.e., H.264/AVC.. E. Akyol, A. M. Tekalp, and R. Civanlar. A flexible multiple description coding framework for adaptive peer-to-peer video streaming. IEEE Jour. Selected Topics in Signal Proc, vol. 1, no. 2, pp , August E. Akyol, A. M. Tekalp, and M. R. Civanlar. Content-aware scalability type selection for rate adaptation of scalable video. EURASIP Jour. on Advances in Signal Processing, vol. 2007, April aytaç alparslan Ph.D. student at ETH-Zurich M.S. Koç University, 2008 Advisor: M. İrşadi Aksun Aytaç Alparslan. Study of green s functions of potentials and fields in layered media composed of left-handed and right-handed materials. Master s thesis, Koç University, Green s functions of vector and scalar potentials, and fields have been studied in layered media composed of materials with positive and negative refractive indices, also referred to as right-handed and left-handed materials, respectively. Since Green s functions are nothing but the potentials or fields due to a given point source in a given environment, they facilitate the use of the superposition integral to calculate the radiation from an arbitrary source in the same environment, as the Maxwell equations are linear for linear materials.. M. İ. Aksun, A. Alparslan, E. Pınar Karabulut, Erdinç Irci, and Vakur B. Ertürk. Determining the effective constitutive parameters of finite periodic structures: Photonic crystals and metamaterials. In IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech, vol. 56, no. 6, pp. 1423, June 2008.

36 aslıhan arslan M.S. Koç University, 2008 Advisor: Hakan Ürey 34 Aslıhan Arslan. Mems scanners actuated with mechanical coupling and comb drives. Master s thesis, Koç University, MEMS microscanners are used to guide or manipulate the light beams more precisely and faster than conventional scanners. Microscanners are mostly used in display, imaging, telecommunication and barcode recognition applications.. M. Sayınta, A. Arslan, H. Suyal, M. Taghizadeh, and H. Ürey. Polymer waveguide and led array integration on fr4 scanner. In Micro-Optics Conference (MOC 2008), Brussels, A. Arslan, Ç. Ataman, S. Holmstrom, K. Hedsen, P. Enoksson, H.R. Seren, and H. Ürey. Mechanically coupled comb drive mems stages. In IEEE Optical MEMS and Nanophotonics, pages , Freiburg, Germany, A. Arslan and H. Ürey. Maskesiz litografi düzeneği ile polimer malzeme işlenmesi. In 9. Ulusal Fotonik Çalıştayı, Aselsan, Ankara, September çağlar ataman Research associate at EPFL, Neuchatel, Switzerland Ph.D. Koç University, 2008 Advisor: Hakan Ürey Çağlar Ataman. Comb Actuated MEMS Platforms for Spectroscopy and Laser Scanning Systems. PhD thesis, Koç University, Wo novel methods are developed for Fourier transform spectroscopy (FTS) and laser scanned display and imaging based on electrostatic comb actuated micro - electro - mechanical system (MEMS) components. Construction of fully functional system demonstrators, in addition to the design, fabrication and characterization of novel optical MEMS components is also presented.. H Ürey and C. Ataman. Fourier transform spectrometer. European Patent , H Ürey and C. Ataman. Modeling and characterization of comb actuated resonant microscanners. J. Micromechanics and Microengineering, H Ürey, C Ataman, and A Wolter. Mems-based fourier transform spectrometer. J. Micromechanics and Microengineering, H Ürey, C Ataman, and C Kan. Dynamic modeling of comb-driven microscanners. Transactions of IEEE-LEOS, C. Ataman. Design, modeling and characterization of electrostatically actuated microscanners. Master s thesis, Koç University, December 2004.

37 emre atsan Ph.D. student at EPFL, Switzerland M.S. Koç University, 2007 Advisor: Öznur Özkasap Emre Atsan. A scalable and reactive replication framework for mobile ad-hoc networks. Master s thesis, Koç University, Scalability is an important criterion which is not taken into consideration in the design of most Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) protocols. However, requirements of a scalable protocol are di erent from the ones for small or meso-scale networks.. E. Atsan and Ö. Özkasap. Scalar: Scalable data lookup and replication framework for mobile ad-hoc networks. In Workshop on Wireless Ad hoc and Sensor Networks WWASN 08, in conjunction with International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), China, June forthcoming. 35 E. Atsan and Ö. Özkasap. Applicability of eigenvector centrality principle to data replication in MANETs. In ISCIS 07, International Symposium on Computer and Information Sciences, Ankara, November E. Atsan and Ö. Özkasap. Seed-based distributed group key selection algorithm for ad hoc networks. In IEEE International Conference on Signal Processing and Communication, Dubai, November E. Atsan and Ö. Özkasap. A classification and performance comparison of mobility models for ad hoc networks. In 5th International Conference on AD-HOC Networks and Wireless (AdHocNOW 06), volume 4104 of LNCS, Ottawa, August ali selim aytuna Application Architect - Kreatif BT, Istanbul M.S. Koç University, 2005 Advisor: Attila Gürsoy Ali Selim Aytuna. A high performance algorithm for automated prediction of protein-protein interactions. Master s thesis, Koç University, The major goal of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics is to achieve a better un- derstanding of the principles of biological systems and processes using informatics tools. Elucidation of the full network of protein-protein interactions is a crucial part of this challenge.. Ali Selim Aytuna, Attila Gürsoy, and Özlem Keskin. Predictions of protein-protein interactions by combining structure and sequence conservation in protein interfaces. Bioinfomatics, 21(12): , Ali Selim Aytuna, Attila Gürsoy, and Özlem Keskin. A parallel algorithm for automated prediction of protein-protein interactions. In Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology, Glasgow, August 2004.

38 ulaş bağcı Ph.D. student at University of Nottingham, UK M.S. Koç University, 2005 Advisor: Engin Erzin 36 Ulaş Bağcı. Boosting classifiers for automatic music genre classification. Master s thesis, Koç University, Music genre classification is an important tool for music information retrieval systems and has been finding important applications in various media platforms. Two important problems of the automatic music genre classification are feature extraction and classifier design.. U. Bağcı and E. Erzin. Automatic classification of musical genres using inter-genre similarity. IEEE Signal Processing Letters, Vol. 14, No. 8, pp , August U. Bağcı and E. Erzin. Boosting classifiers for music genre classification. In 20th International Symposium on Computer and Information Sciences (ISCIS 2005), Berlin, U. Bağcı and E. Erzin. Müzik türlerinin sınıflanmasında benzer kesişim bilgileri uygulamaları. In SIU 2006, Antalya, erhan baş Ph.D. student at Oregon Health and Sciences University M.S. Koç University, 2007 Advisor: Murat Tekalp Erhan Baş. Road and traffic analysis from video. Master s thesis, Koç University, This thesis proposes two video-based traffic analysis systems, one for traffic monitoring with fixed cameras, and one for driver warning applications with on-board cameras looking outwards from the windshield. In the fixed-camera traffic monitoring system, Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) based background subtraction is applied with a new adaptive bounding box size criteria to detect and track vehicles.. E. Bas, A. M. Tekalp, and S. Salman. Automatic vehicle counting from video for traffic flow analysis. In Proc. IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symp., Istanbul, Turkey, Jun 2007.

39 elif bozkurt M.S. Koç University, 2010 Advisor: Engin Erzin Elif Bozkurt. Emotion recognition from speech. Master s thesis, Koç University, We present formant position based weighted Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficient (WMFCC) features for the emotion recognition problem and compare performance results with commonly used feature sets. Since, the Line Spectral Frequency (LSF) features are positioned close to each other around formant frequencies, we propose normalized inverse harmonic mean function to weight critical band energies for the extraction of MFCC features.. E. Bozkurt, C. Eroglu Erdem, T. Erdem, and E. Erzin. Formant position based weighted spectral features for emotion recognition. submitted to Speech Communication, E. Bozkurt, E. Erzin, C. Eroglu Erdem, and T. Erdem. Improving automatic emotion recognition from speech signals. In INTERSPEECH 09, UK, F. Ofli, Y. Demir, C. Canton-Ferrer, J. Tilmanne, K. Balcı, E. Bozkurt, I. Kızıloğlu, Y. Yemez, E. Erzin, A.M. Tekalp, L. Akarun, and A.T. Erdem. Çok bakışlı işitsel-görsel dans verilerinin analizi ve sentezi (analysis and synthesis of multiview audio-visual dance figures). In SIU 08, Didim, Turkey, tahir çelebi Atos Origin M.S. Koç University, 2005 Advisor: M. Reha Civanlar, Öznur Özkasap Tahir Çelebi. Design and implementation of a novel peer to peer approach to multipoint videoconferencing. Master s thesis, Koç University, I present a distributed implementation of a novel approach to multipoint videoconferencing rooted in a peer-to-peer model of media transmission. In this thesis, principals of the peer-to-peer system that I developed are described together with its performance evaluation.. M. R. Civanlar, Ö. Özkasap, and T. Çelebi. Peer-to-peer multipoint videoconferencing on the internet. Signal Processing: Image Communication Journal, 20(8): , T. Çelebi, M.R. Civanlar, and Ö. Özkasap. P2p multi-point videoconferencing on the internet. In International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing and Networks, Innsbruck, Austria, February M.R. Civanlar, Ö. Özkasap, and T. Çelebi. Peer-to-peer multipoint videoconferencing. In ICIP04, IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, Singapore, October 2004.

40 ertan çetingul Ph.D. student at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore M.S. Koç University, 2005 Advisor: Murat Tekalp, Engin Erzin, Yücel Yemez 38 Ertan Çetingul. Discrimination analysis of lip motion features for multimodal speaker identification and speech-reading. Master s thesis, Koç University, In this thesis a new multimodal speaker/speech recognition system that integrates audio, lip texture, lip geometry, and lip motion modalities is presented. There have been several studies that jointly use audio, lip intensity and/or lip geometry information for speaker identification and speech recognition applications.. H.E. Cetingul, E. Erzin, Y. Yemez, and Tekalp A.M. Multimodal speaker/speech recognition using lip motion, lip texture and audio. Signal Processing, Special Section: Multimodal Human-Computer Interfaces, 86: , December H.E. Cetingul, E. Erzin, Y. Yemez, and Tekalp A.M. Discriminative analysis of lip motion features for speaker identification and speech-reading. IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 15: , October H.E. Cetingul, E. Erzin, Y. Yemez, and Tekalp A.M. Robust lip-motion features for speaker identification. In IEEE Int. Conf. on Acoustic, Speech and Signal Processing, Philadelphia, March yasemin demir Ph.D. student at University of California, Berkeley M.S. Koç University, 2008 Advisor: Engin Erzin Yasemin Demir. Music - driven dance synthesis by multimodal dance performance analysis. Master s thesis, Koç University, We present a framework for evaluation of audio feature and dance figure correlation for audio - visual analysis and synthesis of dance figures. Dance figures are performed synchronously with the musical rhythm.. Y. Demir, E. Erzin, Y. Yemez, and A. M. Tekalp. Evaluation of audio features for audio-visual analysis of dance figures. In EUSIPCO 08, Lausanne, Switzerland, F. Ofli, C. Canton-Ferrer, J. Tilmanne, Y. Demir, E. Bozkurt, Y. Yemez, E. Erzin, and A.M. Tekalp. Audio-driven human body motion analysis and synthesis. In ICASSP 08, Las Vegas, USA, F. Ofli, Y. Demir, E. Erzin, Y. Yemez,, and A. M. Tekalp. Multicamera audio-visual analysis of dance figures. In IEEE Int. Conf. on Multimedia Expo, ICME-2007., F. Ofli, Y. Demir, C. Canton-Ferrer, J. Tilmanne, K. Balcı, E. Bozkurt, I. Kızıloğlu, Y. Yemez, E. Erzin, A.M. Tekalp, L. Akarun, and A.T. Erdem. Çok bakışlı işitsel-görsel dans verilerinin analizi ve sentezi (analysis and synthesis of multiview audio-visual dance figures). In SIU 08, Didim, Turkey, 2008.

41 ali ekşim TUBITAK-UEKAE M.S. Koç University, 2004 Advisor: Oğuz Sunay Ali Ekşim. Spectrally efficient wireless packet data transmission for multimedia services provisioning. Master s thesis, Koç University, Efficient wireless packet data access is possible by exploiting the multi-user diversity using an opportunistic multiple access system that allocates system resources to one user at a time while employing adaptive coding and modulation. A scheduling algorithm provides resource allocation in the IS-85 system, and its proper design is perhaps one of the most crucial aspects for ensuring good system performance, and this thesis presents a number of such algorithms.. M. Oğuz Sunay and Ali Ekşim. Fair scheduling for spectrally efficient multi-service data provisioning. In International Journal on Communication Systems, Wiley, August Ali Ekşim and M. Oğuz Sunay. Wireless multicast with multi-user diversity. In Proceedings of the IEEE VTC-Spring 2004 Conference, Milan, Italy, May M. Oğuz Sunay and Ali Ekşim. Wireless multicast packet data provisioning using opportunistic multiple access. In Proceedings of the 10 th IEEE Symposium on Communications and Vehicular Technology, Eindhoven, Netherlands, November M. Oğuz Sunay and Ali Ekşim. On scheduling for delay tolerant data in hdr. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Advances in Wireless Communications, Victoria, Canada, September tayfun elmas Ph.D. student at Koç University M.S. Koç University, 2005 Advisor: Serdar Taşıran Tayfun Elmas. Runtime checking of refinement for concurrent software components. Master s thesis, Koç University, In this thesis, we present a runtime technique for checking that a concurrently accessed data structure implementation, such as a file system or the storage management module of a database, conforms to an executable specification that contains an atomic method per data structure operation. The specification can be provided separately or a non-concurrent, atomized interpretation of the implementation can serve as the specification.. T. Elmas, Qadeer S., and Taşıran S. Goldilocks: A race- and transaction-aware java runtime. In Proc. ACM SIGPLAN Conf. on Programming Language Design and Implementation, San Diego, CA, New York, NY, USA, June T. Elmas, Qadeer S., and Taşıran S. Vyrd: Verifying concurrent programs by runtime refinementviolation detection. In ACM SIGPLAN 2005 Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI), pages 27 37, June Tayfun Elmas and Serdar Taşıran. Vyrdmc: Driving runtime refinement checking with model checkers. fifth workshop on runtime verification. Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science, 144(1):41 56, January 2006.

42 olgaç ergeneman Ph.D. student at ETH-Zurich M.S. Koç University, 2005 Advisor: Hakan Ürey 40 Olgaç Ergeneman. Design and fabrication of polymer magnetic actuators for scanning. Master s thesis, Koç University, This thesis mainly deals with the design and development of resonant laser scanners with a simple and low-cost fabrication process using molded polymers and electroplated magnetic films. The polymer magnetic scanners described here are used in a prototype barcode reading system and the performance proved to be adequate for certain 1D and 2D imaging applications.. Serhan. T. Işıkman, O. Ergeneman, A. D. Yalçınkaya, and H. Ürey. Modeling and characterization of soft magnetic film actuated 2d scanners. J. Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, Vol. 12, pp , March/April A. D. Yalçınkaya, O. Ergeneman, and H. Ürey. Polymer magnetic scanners for bar code applications. Sensors and Actuators A, Vol. 135, pp , O. Ergeneman, A. D. Yalçınkaya, M. Altun, R. Türsen, and H. Ürey. Polymer magnetic scanner. In MME Conference, September Arda D. Yalçınkaya, O. Ergeneman, and H. Ürey. Elektro-manyetik tahrikli polimer bazlı optik tarayıcı. In 6. Ulusal Elektro-Optik ve Fotonik Çalışma Toplantısı, Sabancı Üniv., İstanbul, December mustafa can filibeli Kreatif Bilişim Teknolojileri M.S. Koç University, 2005 Advisor: Reha Civanlar and Öznur Özkasap Mustafa Can Filibeli. Embedded web server based home appliance networks. Master s thesis, Koç University, Powerful microcontrollers are used as parts of most home and office appliances of today. Integrating web servers to these intelligent devices will aid in controlling such devices over the Internet and also creating user interfaces for them in the form of web pages.. M.C. Filibeli, Ö Özkasap, and M.R. Civanlar. Embedded web server based home appliance networks. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 30(2): , April M.C. Filibeli, Ö. Özkasap, and M.R Civanlar. Embedded web server based home appliance networks. In IASTED PDCN 2005, International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing and Networks, Innsbruck, Austria, February M.C. Filibeli, Ö. Özkasap, and M.R. Civanlar. İnternet erişimli ev cihaz ağları. In ASYU-İNİSTA 2004, Akıllı Sistemlerde Yenilikler ve Uygulamaları Sempozyumu. Yıldız Teknik Üniversitesi, 2004.

43 zülküf genç Ph.D. student at Delft University of Technology M.S. Koç University, 2006 Advisor: Öznur Özkasap Zülküf Genç. Epidemic-based reliable and adaptive multicast for mobile ad hoc networks. Master s thesis, Koç University, The characteristic of mobile ad hoc networks demands new set of network strategies in order to provide reliable group communication. The techniques used by majority of the existing solutions are inherited from wired networks and can not adapt well to the dynamic environment of mobile ad hoc networks.. Z. Genç and Ö. Özkasap. Eramobile: Epidemic-based reliable and adaptive multicast for manets. In IEEE WCNC (Wireless Communications and Networking Conference), Hong Kong, March Ö. Özkasap, Z. Genç, and E. Atsan. Epidemic-based approaches for reliable multicast in mobile ad hoc networks. ACM Operating Systems Review, Special Issue on Self-Organizing Systems, 40(3):73 79, July invited article. 41 emre güney Ph.D. student at Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona M.S. Koç University, 2007 Advisor: Attila Gürsoy Emre Güney. Large scale characterization of protein interactions: Identification of hot spots and spatial motifs in protein-protein. Master s thesis, Koç University, Complex biological processes in cells are carried out by association of biological molecules including protein-protein interactions. Many diverse approaches have been developed to explain association of proteins.. Nurcan Tuncbag, Attila Gursoy, Emre Guney, Ruth Nussinov, and Ozlem Keskin. Architectures and functional coverage of protein-protein interfaces. Journal of Molecular Biology, 381(3): , E. Güney, N. Tunçbag, O. Keskin, and A. Gürsoy. Hotsprint: database of computational hot spots in protein interfaces. Nucleic Acids Res., 36(D662-6), N. Tunçbag, E. Güney, C. Ulubas, O. Keskin, and A. Gürsoy. Prism: A web server for prediction and visualization of protein-protein interaction. In 15th Internetional Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology, Vienna, July E. Güney, A. Tunçbag, N. Gürsoy, and O. Keskin. Hotsprint: Database of computational hot spots at protein interfaces. In 15th Internetional Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology, Vienna, July 2007.

44 cihat göktuğ gürler PhD Student at Koç University M.S. Koç University, 2008 Advisor: Murat Tekalp 42 Cihat Göktuğ Gürler. An open-standards based server-client model for robust streaming of multiview content over the internet. Master s thesis, Koç University, The Internet Protocol (IP) is the natural choice for 3D video and 3DTV transmission, considering the recent success of many voice over IP (VoIP), video over IP, and IPTV applications. However, the choice of IP for the network layer does not make the transmission application design straightforward, since IP only dictates the use of unreliable packet switched networks.. Engin Kurutepe, Anıl Aksay, Çağdaş Bilen, C. Göktuğ Gürler, Thomas Sikora, Gözde Bozdağı Akar, and A. Murat Tekalp. A standards-based, flexible, end-to-end multi-view video streaming architecture. In Packet Video 2007, vol., no., pp , November serhan ışıkman Ph.D. student at University of California Los Angeles M.S. Koç University, 2008 Advisor: Hakan Ürey Serhan Işıkman. Electromagnetically actuated optical micro - mechatronic systems integrated on pcb. Master s thesis, Koç University, In this research FR4, most commonly used printed - circuit - board (PCB) material, is explored for the first time as a new material and integration platform for miniaturized optical, electronic, and mechatronic devices and systems. The results of this investigation have been very fruitful that led to several novel concepts and intellectual property in this area.. S. O. Işıkman, R. Sprague, and H. Ürey. Fr4 laser scanner with dynamic focus. Photonics Technology Letters, 21: , August S. Holmstrom H. Ürey, S. Işıkman. Mems and fr4 scanners for microdisplay and imaging applications. In ICMEMS Conference, Chennai, India, January S. O. Işıkman and H. Ürey. Dynamic modeling of magnetic film actuators. IEEE J. Magnetism, M. Sayınta, S. O. Işıkman, and H. Ürey. Scanning led array based volumetric display. In 3DTV Conference: The True Vision - Capture, Transmission and Display of 3D Video, pages 21 24, İstanbul, Turkey, Serhan O. Işıkman, Olgac Ergeneman, Arda D. Yalçınkaya, and Hakan Ürey. Modeling and characterization of soft magnetic film actuated 2d scanners. J. Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, 12: , March/April S. Holmstrom, A. D. Yalçınkaya, S. Işıkman, C. Ataman, and H. Ürey. Fr-4 as a new moems platform. In IEEE-LEOS Optical MEMS Conference, pages 25 26, Hualien, Taiwan, August 2007.

45 aytunç işseven M.S. Koç University, 2007 Advisor: Ahmet Akkaş Aytunç İşseven. Dual mode quadruple precision floating-point division and square-roots units. Master s thesis, Koç University, hamit kalaycıoğlu Ph.D. Koç University, 2008 Advisor: Alphan Sennaroğlu Hamit Kalaycıoğlu. Development and Characterization of Advavanced Mid-Infrared Solid-State Lasers. PhD thesis, Koç University, This thesis investigates the experimental development of advanced solid-state lasers operating in the 2-?m region which have potential applications in medical surgery, remote sensing, and pumping of other mid-infrared solid-state lasers. In particular,lasing characteristics and spectroscopic properties of thulium-doped crystals and glasses in the near- and mid-infrared have been studied... H. Kalaycıoğlu, H. Çankaya, G. Özen, L. Öveçoğlu,, and A. Sennaroğlu. Lasing at 1065 nm in bulk nd3+-doped telluride-tungstate glass. In Opt. Commun., 281, , H. Kalaycıoğlu, H. Çankaya, M. N. Cizmeciyan, A. Sennaroğlu, and G. Özen. Spectroscopic investigation of tm3+:teo2-wo3 glass. In J.Lumin., 128, , H. Kalaycıoğlu and A. Sennaroğlu. Low-threshold continuous-wave tm3+:yalo3 laser. In Opt. Commun., 281, , A. Kiraz, A. Sennaroğlu, S. Doğanay, M. A. Dündar, A. Kurt, H. Kalaycıoğlu, and A. L. Demirel. Lasing from single, stationary, dye-doped glycerol/water microdroplets located on a superhydrophobic surface. In Opt. Commun., 276, , H. Kalaycıoğlu, A. Sennaroğlu, A. Kurt, and G. Özen. Spectroscopic analysis of tm3+:luag. In J. Phys.: Condens. Matter. 19, , H. Kalaycıoğlu, A. Sennaroğlu, and A. Kurt. Influence of doping concentration on the power performance of diode-pumped continuous-wave tm3+:yalo3 lasers. In IEEE J. Selected Topics in Quantum Electron., 11, , 2005.

46 alper kanak TUBITAK-UEKAE M.S. Koç University, 2004 Advisor: Murat Tekalp, Engin Erzin, Yücel Yemez 44 Alper Kanak. Multimodal speaker identification with audio-video processing. Master s thesis, Koç University, In this these we present a multimodal text=dependent speaker identification system. The objective is to improve the recognition performance over conventional unimodal or bimodal schemes.. E. E. Kanak, Y Yemez, and A.M. Tekalp. Speaker identification using multimodal audio-video processing. IEEE Int. Conf. on Image Processing, E. E. Kanak, Y Yemez, and A.M. Tekalp. Joint audio-video processing for biometric speaker identification. IEEE Int. Conf. on Acoustic, Speech and Signal Processing, pınar karabulut Ph.D. student at Koç University M.S. Koç University, 2006 Advisor: M. İrşadi Aksun Pınar Karabulut. Study of planar stratified structures and their novel applications: Chirped mirrors and photonic crystals. Master s thesis, Koç University, The main purpose of this work is to study and to investigate layered media, with a view of understanding its applications as chirped mirrors and photonic crystals. In this work, we reviewed the dispersion phenomena in general and investigated dispersion compensation role of chirped dielectric mirrors and used genetic algorithm for chirped mirror design.. M. I. Aksun, A. Alparslan, E. P. Karabulut, E. Irci, and V. Ertürk. Determining the effective constitutive parameters of finite periodic structures: Photonic crystals and metamaterials. IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., in press.

47 erkan keremoğlu Ph.D. student at Simon Fraser University M.S. Koç University, 2007 Advisor: Serdar Taşıran Erkan Keremoğlu. The lp coverage metric for testing of concurrent programs. Master s thesis, Koç University, We present a coverage metric, Location Pairs (LP) Coverage Metric for testing of concurrent software. This metric is inspired by a common execution pattern encountered in practically used software in the industry and in the literature which causes high-level concurrency errors.. M. E. Keremoğlu, S. Taşıran, and T. Elmas. A classification of concurrency bugs in java benchmarks by developer intent. ACM Press, New York, USA, S. Taşıran, T. Elmas, G. Bolukbasi, and M. E. Keremoğlu. A novel test coverage metric for concurrently-accessed software components. In 5th International Workshop on Formal Approaches to Testing of Software (FATES 2005), University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, July M. E. Keremoğlu, S. Taşıran, and T. Elmas. A classification of concurrency bugs in java benchmarks by developer intent. In Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Systems: Testing and Debugging (PADTAD 06), International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA 06), Portland, Maine, USA, July can kızılkale Ph.D. Student at Bilkent University M.S. Koç University, 2004 Advisor: Alper Erdoğan Can Kızılkale. Fast blind equalization using subgradient-based algorithms. Master s thesis, Koç University, In this thesis, several novel blind equalization methods based on subgradient search over a convex cost surface are presented. These subgradient-based methods are alternatives to the existing iterative blind equalization approaches (such as the Constant Modulus Algorithm (CMA)) which mostly suffer from the convergence problems caused by their nonconvex cost functions.. A.T. Erdoğan and C. Kızılkale. Fast and low complexity blind equalization via subgradient projections. IEEE Trans. on Signal Processing, A.T. Erdoğan and C. Kızılkale. A fast blind equalization method based on subgradient projections. In Proceedings of IEEE ICASSP, A.T. Erdoğan and C. Kızılkale. A moving window approach for blind equalization using subgradient projections. In Proceedings of IEEE SIU, 2004.

48 alper tolga kocataş M.S. Koç University, 2005 Advisor: Attila Gürsoy 46 Alper Tolga Kocataş. Integrating gene expression, protein interaction and protein domain data to improve gene expression clustering. Master s thesis, Koç University, Cell activity is carried out by the interaction of various proteins. Complex interactions among proteins constitute molecular pathways, which are the mechanisms by which the living cells perform biological processes.. A. Kocatas, A. Gürsoy, and R. Cetin-Atalay. Application of data mining techniques to protein-protein interactions. LNCS, 2869: , engin kurutepe Ph.D. student at Technical University of Berlin M.S. Koç University, 2006 Advisor: Murat Tekalp Engin Kurutepe. Client-driven streaming of multi-view videos for interactive 3dtv. Master s thesis, Koç University, We present a novel 3-D multi-view video delivery scheme that allows users watch 3-D content interactively with significantly reduced bandwidth requirements by transmission of small number of views selected according to viewer s head position. The proposed scheme can be used for point-to-point delivery to a single user and/or multi-cast delivery to many users.. E. Kurutepe, R. Civanlar, and M. Tekalp. Client-driven selective streaming of multi-view video for interactive 3dtv. IEEE Trans. on Circ. and Syst. for Video Technology, Special Issue, November A. M. Tekalp, E. Kurutepe, and M. R. Civanlar. 3dtv over ip: End-to-end streaming of multi-view video. IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, November A. Aksay, S. Pehlivan, E. Kurutepe, C. Bilen, T. Ozcelebi, G. Akar Bozdagi, M. R. Civanlar, and A. M. Tekalp. End-to-end stereoscopic video streaming system with content-adaptive rate and format control. Signal Processing: Image Communication, 22(2): , February 2007.

49 umut küçükkabak M.S. Koç University, 2005 Advisor: Ahmet Akkaş Umut Küçükkabak. Design and implementation of reciprocal unit for interval and floating point arithmetic. Master s thesis, Koç University, Floating-point computations suffer from undetected errors due to rounding and catastrophic cancellation. Fast computers let programmers write numerically intensive programs, but computed results can be far from the true results due to the accumulation of errors in arithmetic operations.. 47 bengi mizrahi ARGELA Technologies, Istanbul M.S. Koç University, 2006 Advisor: Deniz Yuret Bengi Mizrahi. Paraphrase extraction from parallel news corpora. Master s thesis, Koç University, Different expressions of the same statement is said to be paraphrases of each other. An example is the phrases solved and found a solution to in Alice solved the problem and Alice found a solution to the problem..

50 başak mutlum Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Washington M.S. Koç University, 2005 Advisor: Deniz Yuret 48 Başak Mutlum. Word sense disambiguation based on sense similarity and syntactic context. Master s thesis, Koç University, Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD) is the task of determining the meaning of an ambiguous word within a given context. It is an open problem that has to be solved effectively in order to meet the needs of other natural language processing tasks.. ferda ofli Postdoc at University of California, Berkeley Ph.D. Koç University, 2010 Advisor: Murat Tekalp, Yücel Yemez, Engin Erzin Ferda Ofli. Learning Statistical Music-to-Dance Mappings for Choreography Synthesis. PhD thesis, Koç University, In this thesis, we propose multimodal signal processing frameworks for audiovisual hu- man body motion analysis towards audio-driven body motion synthesis. We address the problem in the context of dance performances, where body gestures of the dancer are mainly driven by musical pieces and characterized by the repetition of a set of dance motions, i.e., dance figures.. F. Ofli, E. Erzin, Y. Yemez, and A.M. Tekalp. Learn2Dance: Learning Statistical Music-to-Dance Mappings for Choreography Synthesis. submitted to IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, F. Ofli, E. Erzin, Y. Yemez, A.M. Tekalp, A.T. Erdem, C. Erdem, T. Abaci, and M. Ozkan. Unsupervised dance figure analysis from video for dancing avatar animation. In ICIP 08, San Diego, USA, F. Ofli, C. Canton-Ferrer, J. Tilmanne, Y. Demir, E. Bozkurt, Y. Yemez, E. Erzin, and A.M. Tekalp. Audio-driven human body motion analysis and synthesis. In ICASSP 08, Las Vegas, USA, F. Ofli, Y. Demir, E. Erzin, Y. Yemez,, and A. M. Tekalp. Multicamera audio-visual analysis of dance figures. In IEEE Int. Conf. on Multimedia Expo, ICME-2007., 2007.

51 utkan öğmen M.S. Koç University, 2006 Advisor: Attila Gürsoy Utkan Öğmen. Prism: A system for the query,visualization and analysis of protein interfaces and their networks. Master s thesis, Koç University, Many biological processes in the cell are carried out by a complex network of interactions among numerous proteins. The ultimate goal of computational biology would be to simulate this extremely complex machinery called the cell, using in silico methods.. U. Ögmen, O. Keskin, S. Aytuna, R. Nussinoiv, and A. Gürsoy. Prism: Protein interactions by structural matching. Nucleic Acids Research, Vol. 33, Web server issue, pp.w331-w336, turgut öktem Ph.D. Student at EURECOM Institute, France M.S. Koç University, 2006 Advisor: Alper Erdoğan Turgut Öktem. A low complexity adaptive framework for the rate and performance enhancement of pmd limited fiber optic communication systems. Master s thesis, Koç University, In this thesis, an adaptive signal processing based framework for the improvement of fiber optical communication systems is presented. We use Polarization Division Multiplexing (PDM) technique in conjunction with the proposed blind source separation algorithms to increase the bandwidth efficiency of the system where two independent signals are transmitted over two orthogonal polarizations.. Alper T. Erdoğan, Alper Demir, and Turgut M. Öktem. Automatic pmd compensation by unsupervised polarization diversity combining coherent receivers. IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology, to appear, Turgut Öktem and Alper T. Erdoğan. Adaptive paraunitary filter methods for the blind equalization of frequency selective multiple-input-multple-output channels. In to appear in Proceedings of IEEE SIU, April 2006.

52 tayyar önal Working in Industry M.S. Koç University, 2005 Advisor: M. İrşadi Aksun 50 Tayyar Önal. Development of a rigorous and efficient electromagnetic simulation algorithm for 3-d printed structures in multilayer environment. Master s thesis, Koç University, An efficient and rigorous electromagnetic simulation algorithm, based on the method of moments in conjunction with discrete complex image method (MoM-DCIM), is developed for printed structures with multiple vertical conductors extending through multilayer media. As this approach, MoM-DCIM, has already proved to be very efficient to analyze printed structures with only horizontal conductors in multilayer environment, and with horizontal and vertical conductors in single-layer media, it is extended to more general geometries with horizontal conductors and vertical conductors spanning more than one layer.. T. Önal, M. İ. Aksun, and N. Kinayman. An efficient full-wave simulation algorithm of multiple vertical conductors in printed circuits. IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech, October T. Önal, M. İ. Aksun, and N. Kinayman. A rigorous and efficient analysis of 3d printed circuits: vertical conductors arbitrarily distributed in multilayer environment. IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagation, December T. Önal, M. İ. Aksun, and N. Kinayman. Analysis of multiple vertical strips in planar geometries via dcim-mom. Complex Computing Networks, Springer in Physics Series, vol. 104, pp , January T. Önal and M. İ. Aksun. Critical study of dcim, and development of efficient simulation tool for 3d printed structures in multilayer media. In PIERS 2006 in Cambridge, March tuğba özbilgin M.S. Koç University, 2008 Advisor: Oğuz Sunay Tuğba Özbilgin. Performance analysis of user cooperation in wireless peer-to-peer networks. Master s thesis, Koç University, Recently, wireless peer-to-peer networking has gained attention in the research community, where the peers are distributed over the geography and are capable of cooperation in a wireless fashion. In this study, building on the recent body of work on cooperative networks, we develop an information theoretic framework to assess the performances of various peerto-peer protocols that may be considered in the wireless regime.. Tuğba Özbilgin and M. Oğuz Sunay. On the capacity of wireless peer-to-peer networks with transmitter and receiver cooperation. In Proceedings of the IEEE PIMRC 07 Conference, Athens, Greece, September Tuğba Özbilgin and M. Oğuz Sunay. On the capacity of wireless peer-to-peer networks with user cooperation in awgn channels. In Proceedings of the IEEE SIU 07 Conference, Eskişehir, Turkey, June 2007.

53 tanır özçelebi Assistant Professor at Eindhoven University, Netherlands Ph.D. Koç University, 2007 Advisor: Murat Tekalp Tanır Özçelebi. Multiple Objective Optimization for Video Streaming. PhD thesis, Koç University, In this thesis, we propose Multiple Objective Optimization (MOO) frameworks for efficient video streaming. Firstly, we introduce pre-roll delay-distortion optimization (DDO) for uninterrupted contentadaptive video streaming over low capacity, constant bitrate (CBR) channels using MOO.. T. Özçelebi, A. M. Tekalp, and M. R. Civanlar. Delay-distortion optimization for content-adaptive video streaming. IEEE Trans. Multimedia, 9(4): , June T. Özçelebi, O. Sunay, A. M. Tekalp, and M. R. Civanlar. Cross-layer optimized rate adaptation and scheduling for multiple-user wireless video streaming. IEEE Jour. Select. Areas in Commun., 25(4): , May A. Aksay, S. Pehlivan, E. Kurutepe, C. Bilen, T. Özçelebi, G. Bozdagi Akar, M.R. Civanlar, and A. M. Tekalp. End-to-end stereoscopic video streaming system with content-adaptive rate and format control. Signal Processing: Image Communication, 22(2): , February emre öztürk M.S. Koç University, 2010 Advisor: Engin Erzin Emre Öztürk. Driver status identification from driving behavior signals. Master s thesis, Koç University, Driving behavior signals differ in how and under which conditions the driver use vehicle control units, such as pedals, driving wheel, etc. In this study we investigate how the driving behavior signals differ among drivers and among different driving tasks.. E. Ozturk and E. Erzin. Driving status identification under different distraction conditions from driving behaviour signals. In 4th Biennial Workshop on DSP for In-Vehicle Systems and Safety, UTD, TX, USA, 2009.

54 selen pehlivan M.S. Koç University, 2006 Advisor: Reha Civanlar 52 Selen Pehlivan. End to end stereoscopic video streaming system. Master s thesis, Koç University, Media streaming has been an active research area where efficient and network friendly media coding techniques, synchronization, bandwidth, packet loss and delay issues, delivery protocols, and, integrated media players and display systems have all been addressed since early 90 s. Today, there exist several open source and commercial products that can be used to build an integrated streaming environment supporting various audio and video formats.. A. Aksay, S. Pehlivan, E. Kurutepe, C. Bilen, T. Ozcelebi, G. Bozdagi Akar, M. R. Civanlar, and Tekalp A.M. End-to-end stereoscopic video streaming system with content-adaptive rate and format control. Signal Processing: Image Communication, 22(2): , February yusuf sahillioğlu Ph.D. student, University of Florida, USA M.S. Koç University, 2006 Advisor: Yücel Yemez Yusuf Sahillioğlu. A surface deformation framework for 3d shape recovery. Master s thesis, Koç University, We present a generic surface deformation framework for the problem of 3D shape recovery. A spatially smooth and topologically plausible surface mesh representation is constructed via a surface evolution based technique, starting from an initial model.. Y. Sahillioğlu and Y. Yemez. A surface deformation framework for 3d shape recovery. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (MCRS 06), 4105: , 2006.

55 emre sargın MTS at Google Ph.D. student at University of California, Santa Barbara M.S. Koç University, 2006 Advisor: Murat Tekalp, Yücel Yemez, Engin Erzin Emre Sargın. Audio-visual correlation modeling for speaker identification and synthesis. Master s thesis, Koç University, This thesis addresses two major problems of multimodal signal processing using audiovisual correlation modeling: speaker recognition and speaker synthesis. We address the first problem, i.e., the audiovisual speaker recognition problem within an open-set identification framework, where audio (speech) and lip texture (intensity) modalities are fused employing a combination of early and late integration techniques.. M. E. Sargın, Y. Yemez, E. Erzin, and A. M. Tekalp. Analysis of head gesture and prosody patterns for prosody-driven head-gesture animation. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, M. E. Sargın, Y. Yemez, and A.M. Tekalp. Audio-visual synchronization and fusion using canonical correlation analysis. IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, 9(7): , November M. E. Sargın, Y. Yemez, E. Erzin, and A. M. Tekalp. Prosody-driven head-gesture animation. In IEEE Int. Conf. on Acoustic, Speech, Signal Proc. (ICASSP 07), murat sayınta Research engineer at Vestek, Istanbul M.S. Koç University, 2008 Advisor: Hakan Ürey Murat Sayınta. 3d display system using scanning led array modules. Master s thesis, Koç University, D displays seem to be the next step in the evolution of displays from monochrome to color and high definition displays in the era of digital revolution and leading to the ultimate display that can create perfect illusion of reality that cannot be separated from its true copy. In this research, a novel three - dimensional (3D) display concept is introduced and various aspects of the system design are studied.. M. Sayınta and H. Ürey. Scanning led array based 3d display. In IEEE J. Displays, October M. Sayınta, S. O. Işıkman, and H. Ürey. Scanning led array based volumetric display. In 3DTV Conference: The True Vision - Capture, Transmission and Display of 3D Video, pages 21 24, Istanbul, Turkey, M. Sayınta, A. Arslan, H. Suyal, M. Taghizadeh, and H. Ürey. Polymer waveguide and led array integration on fr4 scanner. In Micro-Optics Conference MOC 2008, Brussels, M. Sayınta and H. Ürey. Scanning led array 3d displays. In 3DTV Conference, Kos, Greece, May 2007.

56 ömer ozan sönmez Ph.D. student at Delft University of Technology M.S. Koç University, 2005 Advisor: Attila Gürsoy 54 Ömer Ozan Sönmez. A novel scheduling model for computational grid economy systems. Master s thesis, Koç University, Computational grids have emerged to exploit geographically distributed resources such as clusters or idle personal computers to solve large-scale computational and data demanding scientific problems. It has been considered that developing computational grid economy systems in which users pay for using resources or services, would motivate people to share their resources making the computing power economically available that the communities require.. O. Sönmez and A. Gürsoy. A novel economic-based scheduling heuristic for computational grids. International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications, 21(1), 21-29, O. Sönmez and A. Gürsoy. Comparison of pricing policies for a computational grid market. LNCS Vol pp , önder şuvak Ph.D. student at Koç University M.S. Koç University, 2008 Advisor: Alper Demir Önder Şuvak. Theory and numerical methods for the analysis of biological and electronic oscillators. Master s thesis, Koç University, Oscillatory behavior is encountered in many types of systems including electronic, optical, mechanical, biological, chemical, financial, social and climatological systems. Carefully designed oscillators are intentionally introduced into many engineered systems to provide essential functionality for system operation..

57 hamdi torun Ph.D. student at Georgia Institute of Technology M.S. Koç University, 2005 Advisor: Hakan Ürey Hamdi Torun. Design and fabrication of thermo-mechanical thermal detector arrays with optical readout. Master s thesis, Koç University, Infrared (IR) imaging technology has found many important application areas such as military, automobile heads-up-displays (HUD), medical diagnostics, surveillance for security, victim search for rescue teams, non destructive testing for industrial applications, and geo thermal event detection for environmental control. In this thesis, design and realization of an uncooled opto mechanical IR detector with optical readout is presented.. H. Ürey and H. Torun. US Patent Pending, European Patent EP , February H. Ürey and H. Torun. Thermal deflections in multilayer mems structures and athermalization. J. Applied Physics 100 (2): Art. No , p. 1-6, July H. Ürey and H. Torun. Uncooled thermo-mechanical detector array with optical readout. Opto- Electronics Review, Vol. 14 (1), p. 5560, H. Ürey, O. Ferhanoglu, and H. Torun. Thermo-mechanical detector array with optical readout. In IEEE-LEOS Optical MEMS Conference, Montana, USA, August fatih toy Ph.D. student at EPFL, Switzerland M.S. Koç University, 2008 Advisor: Hakan Ürey Fatih Toy. Optical readout for infrared thermo-mechanicaldetector array. Master s thesis, Koç University, Thermal Imaging has been a useful tool in many heat monitoring applications such as surveillance, target detection, biomedical imaging, monitoring circuits /machinery, insulation inspection and rescue. Among two main approaches to thermal imaging, namely cooled (photon detection) and uncooled thermal imaging (thermal detection); uncooled thermal imaging finds applications where low cost and fabrication simplicity is desired as well as performance.. M. F. Toy, O. Ferhanoğlu, H. Torun, and H. Ürey. Uncooled infrared thermomechanical detector array: Design, fabrication, and testing. In Sensors and Actuators: A. Physical, September O. Ferhanoğlu, M. F. Toy, and H. Ürey. Two-wavelength grating interferometry for mems sensors. In IEEE Photonics Tech. Lett., Vol. 19, p , J. Ollila, M.F. Toy, O. Ferhanoğlu, P. Karioja, and H. Ürey. Vacuum package design for a mems based ir detector array. In Eurepean Microelectronics and Packaging Conference, June O. Ferhanoğlu, M. F. Toy, G. Ünal, H. Kalyoncu, G. Kabuli, A. U. Çalışkan, and H. Ürey. Thermalmechanical detector array with integrated diffraction grating. In Lasers and Electro-Optics Society, LEOS The 20th Annual Meeting of the IEEE, October M. F. Toy, O. Ferhanoglu, O. Akar, T.Akın, and H. Ürey. Uncooled infrared thermomechanical detector array with integrated diffraction grating for imaging applications; design, fabrication and testing. In Eurosensors XXII, p , 2008, Dresden, Germany, 2008.

58 ahmet engin ural PhD Student at Brown University M.S. Koç University, 2008 Advisor: Deniz Yuret 56 Ahmet Engin Ural. Evolution of compositionality with a bag of words syntax. Master s thesis, Koç University, In the last two decades, the idea of an emerging and evolving language has been studied thoroughly. The main question behind this kind of studies is how a group of humans reaches an agreement on the phonology, lexicon and syntax.. Deniz Yuret, Mehmet Ali Yatbaz, and Ahmet Engin Ural. Discriminative vs. generative approaches in semantic role labeling. In 12th Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning (CoNLL), UK, August Deniz Yuret, Engin Ural, Aylin Kuntay, Nihan Ketrez, and Dilara Kocabaş. Morphological cues vs. number of nominals in learning verb types from child-directed speech. In BUCLD33: The 33rd Annual Boston University Conference On Language Development, Boston, US, October Ahmet Engin Ural. The birth, life and extinction of linguistic innovations in an online community. In The 5th International Conference on Youth Language, Copenhagen, Denmark, October A. E. Ural and D. Utku. İnternet te kelime ve kalıpların doğuşu, yaşamı ve tükenişi. In 12. Turkiye de İnternet Konferansı, Ankara, Turkey, November can james wetherilt Graphics and Animation, Yogurt Tech., Istanbul M.S. Koç University, 2005 Advisor: Yücel Yemez Can James Wetherilt. A volumetric fusion technique for surface reconstruction from silhouettes and optical triangulation. Master s thesis, Koç University, Optical triangulation, an active reconstruction technique, is known to be an accurate method but has several shortcomings due to occlusion and laser reflectance properties of the object surface that often lead to holes and inaccuracies on the recovered surface. Shape from silhouette, on the other hand, is a passive reconstruction technique that yields robust, hole-free reconstruction of the visual hull of the object.. Y. Yemez and C. J. Wetherilt. A volumetric fusion technique for surface reconstruction from silhouettes and range data. Computer Vision and Image Understanding, 105(1):3041, 2007.

59 can yagli M.S. Koç University, 2010 Advisor: Engin Erzin Can Yagli. Artificial bandwidth extension of speech using temporal clustering. Master s thesis, Koç University, In this thesis, we investigate the Artificial Bandwidth Extension problem, which aims to reconstruct the missing frequency in wideband speech from narrowband speech. To solve the problem, we utilize the well-known source-filter reproduction of the human voice production system.. C. Yagli and E. Erzin. Artificial bandwidth extension using linear prediction within temporal clusters. submitted to ICASSP 11, soner yaldız Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University, USA M.S. Koç University, 2006 Advisor: Alper Demir, Serdar Taşıran Soner Yaldız. Stochastic application models for energy management in multicore systems. Master s thesis, Koç University, In this thesis, we address the energy management problem that has become an important concern for computing systems. We concentrate on dynamic voltage scaling enabled multicore systems running soft real-time applications that have been decomposed into concurrent tasks.. S. Yaldiz, A. Demir, S. Taşıran, P. Ienne, and Leblebici Y. Characterizing and exploiting task-load variability and correlation for energy management in multi-core systems. In IEEE Workshop on Embedded Systems for Real-Time Multimedia, September S. Yaldiz, A. Demir, and S. Taşıran. Stochastic modeling and optimization for energy management in multi-core systems: A video decoding case study. IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, July 2008.

60 mehmet ali yatbaz Ph.D. student at Koç University M.S. Koç University, 2007 Advisor: Deniz Yuret 58 Mehmet Ali Yatbaz. Stretch: Feature weighting method for the k nearest neighbor algorithms. Master s thesis, Koç University, The k nearest neighbor learning algorithm (knn) is one of the well studied non-parametric learning algorithms. knn assumes that the underlying joint probability density function of the training set is unknown and it estimates the underlying joint probability density functions using the labeled data set (training set). Although this is a realistic assumption in terms of the real world problems, it introduces some limitations on the predictive accuracy, the storage complexity and computational compexity of the knn.. Deniz Yuret, Mehmet Ali Yatbaz, and Ahmet Engin Ural. Discriminative vs. generative approaches in semantic role labeling. In 12th Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning (CoNLL), UK, August mehmet emre yavuz Ph.D. Ohio State University M.S. Koç University, 2003 Advisor: M. İrşadi Aksun Mehmet Emre Yavuz. A high performance algorithm for automated prediction of protein-protein interactions. Master s thesis, Koç University, An efficient electromagnetic simulation algorithm, which is based on the solution of mixed-potential integral equation (MPIE) via the method of moments (MoM), is presented for the analysis of general planar geometries with multiple vertical metallizations. Although the algorithm itself is the main contribution of this thesis, there have been two additional contributions in the steps towards this goal.. M. İrşadi Aksun, M. Emre Yavuz, and Gülbin Dural. Comments on the problems in dcim. In IEEE APS International Symposium and USNC/CNC/URSI North American Radio Science Meeting, Conference Proceedings, M. Emre Yavuz, M. İrşadi Aksun, and N. Kinayman. An efficient approach for the analysis of printed geometries with multiple vertical metallizations and their optimization. In IEEE AP-S International Symposium, M. Emre Yavuz, M. İrşadi Aksun, and Gülbin Dural. Critical study of problems in discrete complex image method. In IEEE EMC Symposium, 2003.

61 erhan yılmaz Ph.D. student at Eurecom Inst. Sophia Antipolis, France M.S. Koç University, 2006 Advisor: Oğuz Sunay Erhan Yılmaz. An information theoretic study of spatial diversity techniques for wireless relay networks. Master s thesis, Koç University, The randomness in the wireless communication channel can be used as a tool to enhance performance through diversity which is broadly defined as the method of conveying information through multiple independent instantiations of these random attenuations. In this thesis, using tools provided by information theory, we propose a comparative study of the gains obtained by various spatial diversity techniques.. Erhan Yılmaz and M. Oğuz Sunay. Impact of channel side information availability at the source node on the capacity of multi-hop mimo relay networks. In Proceedings of the IEEE ISWPC 2008, Santorini, Greece, May Erhan Yılmaz and M. Oğuz Sunay. Amplify-and-forward capacity with transmit beamforming for mimo multiple-relay networks. In Proceedings of the IEEE GLOBECOM 07 Conference, Washington D.C., USA, November Erhan Yılmaz and M. Oğuz Sunay. Effects of transmit beamforming on the capacity of multi-hop mimo relay channels. In Proceedings of the IEEE PIMRC 07 Conference, Athens, Greece, September Erhan Yılmaz and M. Oğuz Sunay. Power controlled mimo-mac capacity with diversity combining. In Proceedings of the IEEE SIU 06 Conference, Antalya, Turkey, April 2006.

62 Admission Students should apply with the completed application form which includes; Application Form 2. Personal and Educational Background Information (CV) 3. Recommendation Letters (2 for MSc, 3 for Ph.D.) 4. TOEFL Requirement (for those whose native language is not English) New Internet Based: Minimum Score 80 Computer Based: Minimum Score 213 Paper Based: Minimum Score ALES scores (required for all Turkish nationals) 6. GRE scores (required from Foreign students; optional for Turkish students) 7. Official transcripts from all the universities attended 8. Statement of Purpose 9. Areas of Interest In addition, an application fee of 35 YTL (20 USD or 15 EUR) must be paid to the account number: , Yapi Kredi Bank, Koc University Branch. (indicating student name and GSSE Yuk. Lisans explanation in the payment). TL Account Details: 35 TL Application fee, Account number: , Yapi Kredi Bank, Koc University Branch. USD Account Details: 20 USD Application fee, Yapi Kredi Bank, Koc University Branch, Swift Code: YAPITRIS, Account Number: , IBAN Code: TR EURO Account Details: 15 EURO Application fee, Yapi Kredi Bank, Koc University Branch, Swift Code: YAPITRIS, Account Number: , IBAN Code: TR Promising candidates will be called for an interview before a final decision is reached on their application.

63 Financial Aid Effective from Fall 2010 For MS Students: Students admitted with a BS/BA degree choose between the following two offers: 1. Tuition waiver (29,000 YTL/year) plus 1,425 YTL monthly stipend 2. Tuition waiver (29,000YTL/year) plus 900 YTL monthly stipend and housing 61 For PhD Students: Students admitted with a BS/BA degree choose between the following two offers: 1. Tuition waiver (29,000 YTL/year) plus 1,425 YTL monthly stipend. The monthly stipend increases to 1,825 YTL after the student passes the PhD qualifier. 2. Tuition waiver (29,000 YTL/year) plus 900 YTL monthly stipend and housing. The monthly stipend increases to 1,300 YTL after the student passes the PhD qualifier. Students admitted with a MS/MA degree choose between the following two offers: 1. Tuition waiver (29,000 YTL/year) plus 1,625 YTL monthly stipend. The monthly stipend increases to 1,825 YTL after the student passes the PhD qualifier. 2. Tuition waiver (29,000 YTL/year) plus 1,100 YTL monthly stipend and housing. The monthly stipend increases to 1,300 YTL after the student passes the PhD qualifier. Additional Benefits: 1. All students receive a laptop computer and private health insurance. 2. Students with successful standing receive travel funds to attend scientific conferences and meetings. 3. PhD students may be offered monthly stipend up to 3,000 YTL through externally funded research grants and projects. 4. Students who receive their stipend from other sources (like TÜBİTAK scholarships or externally funded research grants and projects) are eligible for the following benefits provided by the university: Research Award: 1,300 YTL Free Housing: This includes all costs except telephone expenses. Research Award for PhD students: 2,000 YTL/year after they pass the qualifier. Housing Allowance for PhD students: 525 YTL/month for students who do not use the free housing benefit. Partial Scholarships: Students may also be offered partial scholarships where they pay 13,750 YTL/year tuition and receive no monthly stipend or benefits.

64 For More Information 62 Application Materials: Graduate School of Sciences and Engineering Koc University Rumelifeneri, Sariyer Istanbul, TURKEY Graduate Programs Office: Gülçin Sincan GSSE Admissions KOC University Rumelifeneri, Sariyer Istanbul, TURKEY Phone: Fax: Graduate Student Resource Guide: To request a hardcopy of this booklet, please [email protected]. An up to date version of this booklet can be downloaded from:

65 Acknowledgements We would like to thank the ECE faculty, staff, and students for their generous assistance in preparing this document. Special thanks go to the following individuals: Kimberly Yuret Hikmet Gökhan Himmetoğlu Duygu Boğan İlke Keleşoğlu Mehmet Atakan Günal Alper İncedalcı Muhammed Ender Yücel Asım Utku Zihnioğlu Hasan Tuna İçingir Nilüfer Nazlı Dereli Bahar Yılmaz Emre Öztürk Engin Erzin and Deniz Yuret Coordinators