The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has named Prof. Haldun Özaktaş of the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering as an IEEE Fellow.
With more than 400,000 members, IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional organization. Promotion to its Fellow rank is one of the highest honors that the IEEE can bestow upon an individual, and a mark of recognition reserved for IEEE members whose extraordinary accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest are deemed to merit such a distinction.
Prof. Özaktaş joined the faculty of Bilkent University in 1991. He received a BS degree from Middle East Technical University in 1987 and a PhD degree from Stanford University in 1991.
He is the recipient of the 1998 ICO International Prize in Optics and one of the youngest recipients ever of the Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) Science Award (1999), among other awards and prizes. He was elected Fellow of the Optical Society of America (OSA) in 2002, and Fellow of the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) in 2012.
Bilkent faculty members to have previously received IEEE Fellow status are Prof. Özay Oral (1995), Prof. Abdullah Atalar (2006), Prof. Levent Onural (2007), Prof. Levent Gürel (2008), Prof. Ahmet Enis Çetin (2009) and Prof. Erdal Arıkan (2011).