İsmail Furkan Atasoy, a research assistant in our department, has been awarded the prestigious Excellence Seal for his project titled "Zephlen AI – AI-Powered Customer Assistants" within the TÜBİTAK 1812 BİGG Program 2025 – 1st Call. Out of 2,031 applications nationwide, Zephlen AI was selected as one of 101 projects to receive support and secured an investment grant of 900,000 TRY in exchange for 3% equity. The project team includes project lead İsmail Furkan Atasoy and team member Abdelrahman Wahdan. Academic consultancy is provided by our faculty member Prof. Dr. Ebru Akçapınar Sezer. During the one-year project period, it is planned to develop next-generation assistants intended to replace customer support teams by utilizing large language models (LLMs) and an agent-based approach. The same team, led by İsmail Furkan Atasoy, achieved 3rd place in Türkiye at the inaugural E-Commerce Hackathon held last year as part of TEKNOFEST 2024. We congratulate our research assistant on their outstanding achievement and wish them continued success.

Our two teams achieved significant success in the category of Digital Solutions and Innovative Technologies. Selected from among 406 projects submitted by 130 universities and successfully completing a challenging two-stage process, our teams presented their projects to a jury consisting of Turkcell CEO Ali Taha Koç, vice presidents, and executives from TÜBİTAK, Tazi AI, and HBR Türkiye. The awards were presented by the Minister of Industry and Technology, M. Fatih Kacır.

🥈 Second Place Award: ScaleCall AI

Project Summary: A customizable and self-improving AI Voice Agent platform designed to increase efficiency in call center operations for companies.

Team:

• Muhammed Taşkın (Computer Engineering, 2nd year)
• Bilgin Gürek (Computer Engineering, 2nd year)
• Ecesu Aracı (Artificial Intelligence Engineering, 2nd year)
• Muhammed Ekinci (Artificial Intelligence Engineering, 2nd year)
• Sercan Kahvecioğlu (Computer Engineering, 2nd year)

🥉 Third Place Award: Tagora – Hacettepe Team

Project Summary: Supporting large language models to generate more reliable and meaningful results by incorporating real-life scenarios and feedback from domain experts.

Team:

• Ahmet Melih Narin (Family and Consumer Sciences, 3rd year)
• Alican Çopur (Computer Engineering Prep)
• Arda Sarıcaoğlu (Business Administration, 3rd year)

MSc students Sümeyye Meryem Taşyürek and Tuğçe Kızıltepe from the Department of Computer Engineering at Hacettepe University, under the supervision of Assoc. Prof. Dr. Hacer Yalım Keleş, won third place in the SLRTP 2025 Sign Language Production Challenge. The competition was held as part of the CVPR 2025 Workshop on Sign Language Recognition, Translation, and Production (SLRTP).

Abstract: The awarded system features a gloss-free transformer-based architecture trained to generate 3D sign pose sequences directly from spoken language input. It includes a disentangled autoencoder that encodes poses into an 80-dimensional latent space, separated into four articulatory regions: face, body, left hand, and right hand. A non-autoregressive transformer maps sentence-level BERT embeddings to the latent pose space. The model is trained using L1 loss and channel-wise KL divergence, without relying on gloss annotations.

We are pleased to announce that the project "Teaching SLAM with Autonomous Robots for Rescue Tasks," led by Asst. Prof. Dr. Özgür Erkent, has received support from the Bridge To Turkiye Fund. This support has been sponsored by Nvidia.

For more details, please visit the Robotics Lab webpage.

Our students Tuğçe Kızıltepe and Sümeyye Meryem Taşyürek have won the first place at the 2023 Faculty of Engineering Project Exhibition with their project "Speech to Turkish Sign Language Translation Using State of the Art Neural Machine Translation" under the supervision of Assoc. Prof. Dr. Hacer Yalım Keleş.

Project Title: Speech to Turkish Sign Language Translation Using State of the Art Neural Machine Translation

Advisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Hacer Yalım Keleş

Students: Tuğçe Kızıltepe, Sümeyye Meryem Taşyürek

Project Abstract: Sign languages are natural languages and important tools for communication among individuals with hearing impairments. These languages possess their own grammar and word order, independent of spoken languages. The existence of more than 200 sign languages and 70 million people with hearing impairments underscores the importance of research in this language field. Our graduation project focuses on Turkish Sign Language (TID). In this context, we targeted the synthesis of continuous TID images from text, a problem not previously addressed in the TID field. For this purpose, we created a 20-hour Turkish Sign Language Dataset (STIV) obtained from main news bulletins. This dataset contains sign poser data and text translations. Within the scope of the project, we trained a deep network model that takes text input and produces automatic poses. Initial results indicate that the model has started to learn; in the forthcoming process, we aim to achieve results more aligned with the expected reference videos by continuing the training of the model. This research aims to be a pioneering study in the field of TID pose production and to facilitate the lives of individuals with hearing impairments in our country. We plan to contribute to the advancement of research in this field by sharing the obtained results with the academia.

Click here to dowload the project poster.

The 2022 results of the TUSEB Aziz Sancar Science, Service, and Research Incentive Awards program, carried out by the Health Institutes of Turkiye (TÜSEB) since 2017, have been announced. Our faculty member Assoc. Prof. Tunca Doğan was deemed worthy of the 2022 Research Incentive Award. Dr. Tunca Doğan reportedly won this award for his scientific contributions to the fields of bioinformatics and artificial intelligence applications in health.

Team Cervos, which consists of our students from the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) Society, who continue their studies within the body of Hacettepe University Electrical and Electronics Engineering and under the guidance of the community academic advisor Assoc. Prof. Dr. Dinçer Gökcen participated with the work they presented remotely in the CanSat Model Satellite competition which is the most prestigious model satellite competition in the world and organized in Virginia this year under the umbrella of the American Astronautical Society (AAS) and the main sponsorship of NASA, Lockheed Martin.

Team Cervos became a finalist in the qualifying report with a score of 97.77/100. Our students qualified for the fifth place in the world in the demonstration category in this competition.

Science Academy's top priorities include encouraging the youth to engage in good science, and rewarding the best examples. In order to choose and reward the best young academics and to support them in conducting new studies, the BAGEP award program was initiated in the year 2013 (https://en.bilimakademisi.org/bagep/). Hacettepe University, Computer Engineering Department faculty member Assoc. Prof. Tunca Doğan is one of the recipients of BAGEP 2022 Award (https://bilimakademisi.org/bagep-2022-odul-kazananlar/).

METU Prof. Dr. Mustafa Parlar Foundation presents Honor, Science, Service and Encouragement Awards to emphasize the importance of scientific production and dissemination of scientific knowledge, and support scientists with distinguished achievements. As a part of this year's awards, Hacettepe University, Computer Engineering Department faculty member Assoc. Prof. Tunca Doğan received the 2021 Research Incentive Award.

A team of our students, Azra Melis Ertan, Yusuf Tolga Yönter, Arçin Ülkü Ergüzen, Mert Aksu and Kutay Taşcı came in first place in the Hackathon organized by METU IEEE and Pixery Labs on 11-12-13 January 2020. The award-winning app created by the team uses Augmented Reality to encourage participants of events such as concerts and expos to clean event grounds via gamification.

Our students Berk Gülay, Ümit Ese, Tarık Yılıkoğlu came in first place in in the Final Competition of TUBITAK 2242 University Students Research Project Competition at Information and Communication Category held between September 17-22, 2019 with their projects titled "Mobile Application Defining Detailed Object for Visually Impaired Individuals with Deep Learning".

Two of our undergraduate students, Mehmet Sezer and Güney Kırık came in first place in Hackinoks Google Smart Assistant Hackathon, which was held in 10th of May 2019 at Bilkent Cyberpark TTGV Kıvılcım Center by Ekinoks Software, with Smart Assistant App Rememberry which reminds how to perform certain actions to people with Alzheimer's disease. We are proud of our students who were awarded 5000₺ among 30 participants, congratulate them, wishing them to continue their success and support them. To get more information about Rememberry and find source code: https://github.com/mhmtszr/rememberry

Our faculty member Assoc. Prof. Erkut Erdem received 2018 Turkish Academy of Sciences' 2018 Outstanding Young Scientist (GEBIP) Award which is given by TÜBA to support young scientists with outstanding scientific studies in their research and development of their own research groups and encourage young scientists to undertake successful research.

Our faculty member Assoc. Prof. Lale Özkahya received one of the three 2018 Science Academy Young Scientists Award (BAGEP) in Mathematics.

'Using Synthetic Data for Deep Person Re-Identification' project proposed by Dr. Erkut Erdem (PI), Dr. Aykut Erdem and Dr. Ufuk Çelikcan has been accepted for funding by TÜBİTAK 1001 program.

Young Academy of Sciences Working Group (Genç-BA) was established to support the outstanding achievements of young scientists in Turkey and to create a platform to announce their voices. At the last meeting of the Group two new members were accepted, one of them is lecturer of our department Asst. Prof. Dr. Aykut Erdem.

Our senior students Cem Aslan and Hayati İbiş placed third at TÜBİTAK 2017 Undergraduate Students' Software Project Competition in the category of Virtual Reality with their project titled "Visible Crowds: Procedural Production of Urban Crowds with Automatically Generated Dense Annotations", supervised by our faculty members Asst. Prof. Ufuk Çelikcan, Asst. Prof. Aykut Erdem and Asst. Prof. Erkut Erdem. We are proud of their innovative achievements in various research fields while pursuing their undergraduate degrees and wish them all the best in their future endeavors..

The project named 'Augmented Reality Development Tool' has been accepted within TÜBİTAK 1003 program.

The project named 'Summarization Approaches Towards Interpreting Big Visual Data' has been accepted within TÜBİTAK 1003 program.

The project named 'Enhancing the User Experience of 3D Displayed Virtual Scenes' has been accepted within TÜBİTAK 1001 program.

The project named 'Measurement, assessment and improvement of software testing maturity for people, teams, services and organizations' has been accepted within TÜBİTAK 1001 program.

The project named 'Recognition of Collective Activities via Deep Learning Techniques' has been accepted within TÜBİTAK 1001 program.

The project named 'Reliability-Oriented Design Methods for Application Specific Integrated Circuits' has been accepted within TÜBİTAK 1001 program.

Our students Kübra Akeren and Burakcan Ekici won the first place at the TÜBİTAK 2016 University Senior Pojects Competition in the category of Scientific Solutions (Project Title: Conformance Analysis of Disease Treatment Processes to Treatment Protocols: Process Mining Oriented Tool Development; Project Supervisor: Assist. Prof. Dr. Ayça Tarhan). Click here for TÜBİTAK News with photos and details (in Turkish).

Our students Mesut Erhan Unal, Begum Citamak and Semih Yagcioglu (under supervision of Aykut Erdem, Erkut Erdem, Nazlı İkizler Cinbiş and Ruket Çakıcı (METU)) won Alper Atalay Best Student Paper Award (First Prize) at the 24th IEEE Conference on Signal Processing and Communications Applications (SIU 2016). At the same conference, Berkan Demirel (under supervision of Nazlı İkizler Cinbiş and Gökberk Cinbiş (Bilkent University)) won Alper Atalay Best Student Paper Award (Third Prize), and Göksu Erdoğan and Bora Çelikkale (under supervision of Aykut Erdem and Erkut Erdem) won IEEE Best Student Paper Award (Second Prize). We congratulate our students and their supervisors for their outstanding achievements. You can follow the following links to reach the awarded papers: AA-1, AA-3, IEEE-2.

Google started the award program with the goal of fostering collaboration with the academic community for developing innovative applications and addressing technical challenges regarding the emerging Internet of Things ecosystem. As a part of the award, some of the newest Google IoT technologies will be donated to our department. For more information about the award program, please click here.

Gökçen Çimen, Zümra Kavafoğlu, Ersan Kavafoğlu, Tolga Çapan ve Haşmet Gürçay have won Best Paper Award at 28th Annual Conference on Computer Animation and Social Agents (CASA 2015)( Proje Title: Skill Learning Based Catching Motion Control). Click here for News with photos and details.

Prof. Dr. Mehmet Önder Efe won the 2013 Best Author Award from the Turkish Academy of Sciences for his book Automatic Control Systems.

Our students Sinan Polat, Gamze Çavuşoğlu, Gizem Soğancıoğlu, and Mehmet Koca won the 3rd place in the category of Education at TÜBİTAK's 2242-Undergraduate Students Software Projects Competition with their senior project 'Education of Otistic Children Using Tablet Computer'. We congratulate our students and their supervisor Dr. Ahmet Burak Can.

Bölümümüzü temsilen IBM Yazılım Akademisi 2011 yarışmasına katılan Android343 (Ensar Basri KAHVECİ, Metin KILIÇ, Seçkin TOZLU) ve Jinuse (Ahmet Sinan GEDİK, Barış OKU, Yasin ÖZTAŞ) takımlarımız, yarışmaya katılan yaklaşık 80 takım arasından Türkiye finaline kalan 8 takım arasına girmeyi başardılar. 14 Mayıs 2011 tarihinde, İstanbul'daki IBM Türkiye Ofisi'nde yapılan yarışmada Türkiye birincisi olan Jinuse takımı 7-8 Eylül 2011 tarihleri arasında Almanya'da IBM tarafından organize edilecek Extreme Blue Expo etkinliğine katılmaya hak kazandı.

REM and Salvager teams achieved a remarkable success by going on the finals and being in the first six teams at Microsoft Imagine Cup 2011. Furthermore, REM team has won the second rank with their Eye Reflection project.

Students in REM ve Salvager teams are listed as follows: REM team: Rana Algan, Elif Boncuk, Melike Özdemir, Emine Gül Danacı Salvager team: Emre Esirik, Serkan Çakmak, Yakup Yasin Kalafat, Buse Erol

We congrutulate our students and their advisor Dr. Ahmet Burak Can' and wish them a continued success.

Hacettepe Üniversitesi Mühendislik Fakültesi 2011 Proje Sergisi'nde öğrencilerimizden Rana ALGAN, Elif BONCUK, Melike ÖZDEMİR ve Emine Gül DANACI, Dr. Ahmet Burak CAN danışmanlığında geliştirdikleri Göz Kontrollü Hasta-Bilgisayar Etkileşimi Arayüzü başlıklı projeleriyle fakülte birincisi oldular.

Hacettepe Üniversitesi Mühendislik Fakültesi 2010 Proje Sergisi'nde öğrencilerimizden Seyfullah DEMİR ve Anıl AYDIN, Dr. Ahmet Burak CAN danışmanlığında geliştirdikleri Düşük Maliyetli Bir Beyaz Tahta Uygulaması Geliştirilmesi başlıklı projeleriyle fakülte birincisi oldular.