A number of Bilkent students received awards for their projects at the 15th Ankara Startup Summit, held in December. The event, organized by the Bilkent Young Entrepreneurs Society in partnership with Bilkent Cyberpark and with Jotform as the main sponsor, brought founders of aspiring startups together with representatives of the entrepreneurial world.
The summit culminated in a competition among 20 startups that had been selected from among more than 100 applicants. The startups competed in two categories – Elevator Pitch and Startup Battle – with awards presented to the top finishers in both. Additional awards went to other projects of special merit.
In the Elevator Pitch category, Industrial Engineering student Ahu Erdoğan and her teammates won first prize for their project, called Kangaroo. Described as offering a new-generation solution for cargo package circulation systems, the project was awarded eligibility for a loan from Amazon Web Services, to be used during the application development process.
In addition, a team consisting of Computer Engineering students Aleyna Sütbaş, Berk Takıt, Baykam Say, Ramazan Melih Diksu and Ömer Yavuz Öztürk received third prize in the same category (as previously reported in Bilkent News, Issue 14).
The Productive Academy Digital Support Package award went to CTIS student Umut Dinçer Yananer, Law student Eray Yurtçu and their fellow project member Yavuz Bolat. Their Petbilir project is a platform for use by veterinarians.
Computer Engineering students Oğuz Kaan İmamoğlu, Süleyman Semih Demir and Ahmet Ayberk Yılmaz and Economics graduates Sarp Türkmen and Seyfullah Saatçi won the Ankara Metropolitan Municipality Open Office Award for their project Miraclepass, described as a new-generation payment application. Miraclepass employs artificial intelligence analysis to offer personalized campaigns, and also allows users to pay their accounts from their smartphones.