International Grants for 5 Projects from OzU!
Özyeğin University researchers, Prof. Dr. Tufan Adıguzel, Assoc. Prof. Cimen Gunay Erkol, Asst. Prof. Yigit Can Altan, Asst. Prof. Ismail Akturk and Instructor Dr. Ezgi Elci has been considered worthy to receive financial and infrastructure support from international grant programs with below projects from different disciplines. We congratulate our researchers whose projects will be supported and wish them an efficient project implementation process.
- Learn and Experience Science Together Online
The main aim of the project is to digitalize the physical environment and tools required by science education and eliminate the spatial dependencies of students and teachers and contribute to eliminating the gaps for disadvantaged groups. To support this aim, the "hands-on science digital education platform", "digital hands-on science education kits" and "the teacher and student" guide will be prepared within the project.
Project Coordinator: Prof. Tufan Adiguzel/ Sectoral Education Program & Office for Learning and Teaching Enhancement
Program Name: Erasmus+ Program
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- Gender Backlash in Turkey
This research project is part of a research consortium on countering gender backlash in different countries (https://counteringbacklash.org/) and it seeks to address a significant gray area in Turkish women’s rights movement. The project team aims to analyze the emphasis by certain agents on family values as the primary institution in which women are to be empowered, which creates a liminal space that is closely related to the gender backlash discussions.
Project Coordinator: Assoc. Prof. Cimen Gunay Erkol/ Faculty of Social Sciences/ Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Program Name: Institute of Development Studies
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- A Tool for Strategic Risk Assessment for the Waterways Based on the Principles-Driven Method
This project aims to develop a tool that assesses the risk level of the waterway considering traffic, waterway complexity, and environmental factors. The proposed tool will be designed to analyze the risk of maritime traffic systems, rooted in first principles, supported by big data analysis, machine learning methods, as well as experts’ knowledge along with their understanding of the subject.
Project Coordinator: Asst. Prof. Yigit Can Altan/ Faculty of Engineering/ Department of Civil Engineering
Program Name: ERA-NET Cofund- MarTERA Program
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- Realization of Biologically Plausible Super- Learning Paradigm on Neuromorphic Hardware to Accomplish Motor Control Tasks in Real-time
It is assumed that the brain achieves learning of all complex behaviors by three main mechanisms: unsupervised, supervised and reinforcement learning, where cerebral cortex, cerebellum and basal ganglia are believed to coordinate these mechanisms, respectively. In the last decade, strong evidence has been presented about the direct interconnection between basal ganglia and cerebellum. These interactions render a comprehensive learning paradigm called super-learning. Super-learning incorporates well-known supervised, unsupervised and reinforcement learning and gives rise to a learning that is more than the sum of these learning approaches and which involves recurrent interactions between neural structures. Inspired by the brain, the goal of this project is to develop a bio-plausible super-learning framework that can be implemented on a highly energy-efficient neuromorphic substrate, such as Intel's Loihi. It would be a versatile tool that can be used in complex decision making and motor control problems in different application domains (e.g., robotics, object tracking, and neuroprosthesis).
Project Coordinator: Asst. Prof. Ismail Akturk/ Faculty of Engineering/ Department of Computer Science
Program Name: INTEL Neuromorphic Research Community
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- Political Party Representation of Anti-Immigration Attitudes: The Case of Turkey
This project analyzes party competition dynamics over the immigration issue in Turkey since 2016. Receiving more than 3.5 million Syrian refugees since 2011, Turkey stands as an understudied case in testing political party representation of popular attitudes towards immigrants. In the context of the European Union member states, the rise of anti-immigration attitudes among the electorate strengthened populist radical right parties, transformed mainstream politics, and significantly contributed to democratic backsliding. The case of Turkey stands as an anomaly to this pattern.
Proje Yürütücüsü: Instructor Dr. Ezgi Elci/ Faculty of Social Sciences/ Department of International Relations
Program Adı: Heinrich Boll Stiftung Foundation