Hocabey Turns 91!
 

Professor İhsan Doğramacı turned 91 on April 3, 2006. To mark the occasion, a birthday celebration was organized at the Bilkent Hotel yesterday, with a special program presented by the students of the Bilkent Primary School.

The students performed Latin dances, Caucasian folk dances and Azerbaijani songs, as well as "Memories" from the musical "Cats." In addition, Can Elbi, an instructor at the Başkent University Faculty of Music and Performing Arts, played J.S. Bach's Solo Violoncello Suite No. 1.

We wish Hocabey many happy returns on his birthday!

Theater Day Celebrated on Campus

Last week, ninety countries including Turkey participated in the celebration of World Theater Day, which since 1962 has been held every year on March 27. This year, Bilkent Theater marked the occasion by performing the play "Var mı Olmak, Yok mu Olmak" by Nazım Hikmet for students of the Keçiören Farabi Lisesi and the Altı Nokta Görme Engelliler Derneği.

The aim of this special performance was to introduce theater to young people who had never seen a play before. The high school students were very excited to see a theater stage for the first time and to receive some information about both theater and poetry before the play started. Prof. Cüneyt Gökçer, Chair of Performing Arts, and the general artistic director of "Var mı Olmak, Yok mu Olmak," gave the opening talk to the young audience.

When the curtain went down at the end of the play, the student actors
and actresses took their final bows as members of the cast. The current
Bilkent production has had a long run of successful performances, and
the special World Theater
Day performance was the last one.
 

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New Academic Rules and Regulations Approved by the Senate

On March 24, the University Senate approved a set of changes regarding academic rules and regulations for undergraduate students. These new rules replace the current two-semester-based probation/repeat system. Under the new rules, cumulative GPA will be used to determine academic standing. According to these rules, students with a CGPA of 2.00 or more have satisfactory standing. A CGPA between 1.80 and 2.00 results in probation, and a CGPA of less than 1.80 is considered unsatisfactory standing.

Students with unsatisfactory standing will not be able to register for any new courses the next semester. Instead, they will have to repeat some of the courses they took in previous semesters in which they received grades lower than C. These students will be able to choose which specific courses to repeat, with help from their advisors. (Continued)

“Intelligent” Fabrics of the Future: Wearable Optoelectronics and Thermal Sensors

Imagine a military command center receiving the following message: "Two wounds detected on soldier 1017, location 1, upper stomach, massive bleeding; location 2, lower thigh, no bleeding...over.” Did a medic in the field send the report? No--in fact, it came directly from the soldier’s uniform. The "intelligent" uniform contained heat-sensitive fiber webs embedded inside its fabric, capable of relaying critical wound data via a wireless link.

Mehmet Bayındır, Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics of the Bilkent Faculty of Science and the National Nanotechnology Research Center (NNRC), and his colleagues at MIT have been working on a project funded by the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies to design an “intelligent military uniform” which can see light, sense heat, detect chemical and biological molecules, and be identified in the dark. (Continued)

Staff Members Mark 10 Years at Bilkent

Last week, the university honored staff members who have been at Bilkent for 10 years. Support services staff members received their plaques on Monday, March 27, while academic and administrative staff members (shown above) were honored on Tuesday, March 28.