Erkay Savaş received the BS (1990) and MS (1994) degrees in electrical engineering from the Electronics and Communications Engineering Department at Istanbul Technical University. He completed the PhD degree in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Oregon State University in June 2000. He had worked for various companies and research institutions before he joined Sabanci University in 2002. His research interests include applied cryptography, data and communication security, privacy in biometrics, security and privacy in data mining applications, embedded systems security, and distributed systems. He is a member of IEEE, ACM, the IEEE Computer Society, and the International Association of Cryptologic Research (IACR).
Meltem Müftüler-Baç is a Professor of International Relations and Jean Monnet chair ad personam at Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey. She received her B.A in Political Science from Boğazici University in 1988, MA and Ph.D. in Political Science and International Relations from Temple University, USA in 1989 and 1992, respectively. She became assistant professor in 1992, associate professor in 1996 and professor in 2005. Before joining Sabancı University in February 2002, she taught at Bilkent University from 1992 to February 2002 as Assistant and Associate Professor, where she was also the Vice Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences at Bilkent University between 2000 and 2002. She worked previously at Temple University (USA), Bilkent University (Turkey), and was a Visiting professor at the University of Chicago, and an Affiliate Professor at University of Stockholm (2013-2016), a Visiting Scholar and Affiliate Faculty at the Perry World House, University of Pennsylvania (2019-2020). At Sabanci University, Professor Müftüler-Baç coordinated the Social and Political Studies undergraduate program from 2002 to 2011, established the masters program in European Studies and coordinated it from 2004 to 2014, and established and coordinated the BA program in International Studies from 2011 to 2014. Prof. Müftüler-Baç has authored multiple academic books, Turkey's Relations with a Changing Europe published by the Manchester University Press in 1997, Divergent Pathways: Turkey and the European Union published by Barbara Budrich in 2016, and co-edited Turkey and the European Union Relations: Dilemmas, Opportunities and Constraints, with Yannis Stivachtis, Lexington books in 2008, and Parliamentary Cooperation and Diplomacy in EU External Relations with Jan Wouters and Kolja Raube, in 2019. Her publications appeared in Journal of European Public Policy, Middle Eastern Studies, East European Qaurterly, Journal of European Integration, South East European Politics and Society, Security Dialogue, International Studies Perspectives, Turkish Studies, Women’s Studies International Forum, West European Politics, International Journal, Journal of Democracy, Journal of Language and Politics, Asia-Europe Journal, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, European Journal of Women’s Studies, East European Politics. Her work has been supported by the EU’s research programs consistently. She participated in the F6 project ‘Reconstituting Democracy in Europe’ from 2006 to 2012, FP7 project ‘TRANSWORLD’ for 2012-2015, and FP7 project ‘MAXCAP’ for 2013-2016. She is participating currently in two H2020 projects; InDivEU-Integrating Diversity in the EU 2019-2022, and MAGYC- Migration and Asylum Governance 2018-2022. In 2011, she received a grant for a Jean Monnet Center of Excellence from the European Commission. Her work is widely cited in Turkey-European Union relations, on EU enlargement, Turkish foreign policy and Turkish politics. Prof. Müftüler-Baç holds two prestigious awards from the Turkish Academy of Sciences: Young Social Scientist Investigator Award in 2002 and Distinguished Young Scientist Award in 2003. She was awarded with the Jean Monnet Professor ad personam title from the European Commission in 2004. Her research and academic outputs could be reached at her website: http://myweb.sabanciuniv.edu/muftuler, ResearchGate and her Google Scholar page.
Nihat Kasap holds a Ph.D. in Business with MIS major from University of Florida and B.S. and M.S. degrees from Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey and University of Florida respectively. He has joined Sabancı University, School of Management in 2004 as an Assistant Professor. He became an Associate Professor in 2012 and a full Professor in 2017. His research focuses on pricing and QoS issues in telecommunication networks, mobile technologies in E-government services, heuristic design and optimization, Social Media Analytics and Data Mining. His works have appeared in Operations Research Letters, Decision Support Systems, International Journal of Forecasting, Decision Sciences, International Journal of Systems Science, Annals of OR, Expert Systems with Applications and in the Proceedings of numerous international and national conferences. The research projects that he joint have been awarded funding from the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) and Ministry of Industry and Commerce.