Turkish Grand National Assembly Honor Prize Awarded to Prof. Halil İnalcık
Prof. Halil İnalcık, renowned historian and founder of Bilkent University's Department of History, was awarded the National Sovereignty Honor Prize. The Presidential Board of the Turkish Grand National Assembly may award the Prize to one person each year who has significantly contributed to the promotion and representation of Turkey on the international stage through distinguished achievements and success. In 2006, it was bestowed upon Prof. İhsan Doğramacı.
A ceremony took place Wednesday, July 30 at the Turkish Grand National Assembly. During a speech given after receiving his award, Prof. İnalcık stated, "I've spent my whole life at archives, libraries to tell my nation’s true history. To me, this is a debt of gratitude. This honor shows that I have accomplished my duty. I would like to greet you all, say thank you, and to express my deep happiness."
A professor of Ottoman History at Bilkent University since 1993, Prof. Halil İnalcık received his Ph.D. from Ankara University. He has taught at Ankara University and the University of Chicago. He has also held appointments at Columbia University, Princeton University, Harvard University, and the University of Pennsylvania. He is an expert in classical Ottoman economic, social and institutional history and has published 300 scholarly articles and numerous books.
Bilkent Faculty Receive TÜBİTAK Awards
Two professors from Bilkent University have been recognized by The Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) for 2008. Prof. Metin Gürses from the Department of Mathematics is the recipient of the TÜBİTAK Science Award and Prof. Tuğrul Dayar is the recipient of this year's TÜBİTAK Incentive Award.
Prof. Metin Gürses is being recognized for his work on the "Integrability of the Einstein Field Equations in Mathematical Physics." Professor Gürses received his Ph.D. from Middle East Technical University (METU) in 1975. He visited several universities and institutions abroad, such as Yale University, Princeton University, Köln University, Max Planck Institute at Garching, and ICTP in Italy. He was a faculty member at METU (1975-1982) and Çukurova University (1987-1991) and worked in TÜBİTAK's Institute for Fundamental Sciences at Gebze (1982-1987). He joined Bilkent's Department of Mathematics in 1991. Since then he has supervised four Ph.D. students. He is the head of the Applied Mathematics Group in the department and has been conducting "Thursday Seminars on Applied Mathematics" for the past 15 years. These have focused mainly on the integrability of the nonlinear partial differential equations, on the general theory of gravitation, and on differential geometry. Dr. Metin Gürses is a member of the Turkish Academy of Sciences, and has received the Sedat Simavi Science Award in 1986 and TÜBİTAK's Young Science Award in 1984.
Prof. Tuğrul Dayar received his Ph.D. in 1994 from North Carolina State University and joined the Department of Computer Engineering at Bilkent University in early 1995. While at Bilkent he has taken research visits to the INRIA Lab on Modeling and Computation in Grenoble, the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, University of Versailles, Charles University in Prague, Dresden University of Technology, and Dortmund University, and has received an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship and a young scientist award from the Turkish Academy of Sciences. This Incentive Award is being given for his work on iteratively computing and stochastically bounding performance measures of sparse and Kronecker structured large Markov chains that arise in the area of performance modeling.
Bilkent News Interactive is
best viewed by 800x600 resolution.
You can send comments, questions, etc. about Bilkent News Interactive by clicking this
link.
|
Top-Scoring Students Visit Prof. İhsan Doğramacı
Based on the results announced by the Student Selection and Placement Center (ÖSYM), Bilkent University continues to attract Turkey's best students. In total thirty-four students from the top 100 scorers of both the quantitative and equally-rated categories on the 2008 University Entrance Exam (ÖSS) have chosen to study at Bilkent this year.
On September 11, this latest group of top-scoring students visited the President of Bilkent University and Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Prof. İhsan Doğramacı.
Hocabey pointed out the important role of students in a university and welcomed them with these words: "The owner of a university is neither the Rector, nor the professors; the only owners of a university are the students. Congratulations, you have been successful, and the prize of your success
is to enter one of the best universities in the world. Welcome home."
Three of the 10 students with the highest scores on the 2008 University Entrance Exam (ÖSS- Quantitative) have also decided on Bilkent. The number of top-ten scorers enrolling at different universities is as follows:
Bilkent University-3
METU-2
Hacettepe University-2
Boğaziçi University-2
İstanbul University-1
Orkun Bildir, who earned first place in the Quantitative score testing, has decided to become part of Bilkent's Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department. Like all newcomers, the 2008 University Entrance Exam top scorer was very busy with the Orientation Program in his first week.
So, why did Orkun come to Bilkent? "The main reason I chose Bilkent was because it has better academic and social facilities when compared to other universities in Turkey. Academics, and especially sports facilities and the library impressed me." Orkun was born in Aydın in 1990. He knew he would be one of the top one hundred scorers in the university entrance exam. However, ranking first surprised him. Orkun enjoys sports, especially table tennis, and wants to learn to play bridge.
Also in this issue:
|
