Istanbul Kültür University (IKU) has sent off its graduates to the future with the 2021-2022 Academic Year Graduation Ceremony. Sinan Erdem Sports Hall hosted the ceremony, which was held in two sessions with the participation of faculty members and families, on Tuesday, July 6, 2022. With the ceremony in which approximately two thousand students graduated from eight faculties and two vocational schools, the total number of graduates that our university has reached in 25 years has hit 32 thousand.

At the ceremony that started with the recitation of the Turkish National Anthem, our Chairperson of the Board of Trustees, Dr. Bahar Akıngüç Günver, and our Rector Prof. Dr. Hanife Öztürk Akkartal addressed the graduates and families. At the ceremony where the messages of Ful Akingüç, the President of Kültür College Foundation, the founding foundation of our university, were read, the Faculty/Vocational School's top students and 2011 graduate of the Department of English Language and Literature Tuğçe Oral made their speeches. 

Istanbul Kültür University 2022 Graduation Ball was hosted by Portaxe Baltalimanı on Friday, July 1st. The ball, which was held with the participation of our Board of Trustees & President of IKUMED Dr. Bahar Akıngüç Günver, our Rector Prof. Dr. Hanife Öztürk Akkartal and IKUMED Board Members, continued with the DJ performance of Emrah Karaduman. IKU Graduation Ball ended with the after party.

One of the IEEE IKU Club TEKNOFEST teams, IKU Red Wings won the right to compete in the final for the second time. The team, which has represented our university as a finalist at TEKNOFEST 2021, will fiercely compete for the leading degrees this year.

The aim of the team is to bring forth technological advancements that not only reflect the advance technology of today but also lead the technology to the future. To fulfill this aim, they participated in TEKNOFEST 2021 in the "Fighting UAV Rotary Wing" category. Although it was their first time partaking in the competition, they passed the reporting and video stages with great success. This year, they are competing in the "Fixed Wing" category of the same competition. Completing the Preliminary Design Report with a score of 82.50/100 and the Critical Design Report with a high score of 94.5/100, they won the right to compete in the final for the second time. Our team, which has great anticipations for finishing this year’s competition in a leading degree, continues to work day and night with the same enthusiasm and ambition of the first day the team was established.

The UAV, which they named "HÜMA", was developed to perform the two main missions of the competition, "Combating UAV" and "Kamikaze UAV". In the "Combating UAV" mission, the UAV must detect rival UAV targets in case of dog fight and successfully hit the targets virtually, while at the same time trying to avoid possible deadlocks by rival UAVs. In the "Kamikaze UAV" mission, the UAV must autonomously detect ground targets positioned on the track from different standpoints. In order to be successful, the UAV must maneuver successfully taking into account the distance between the target and the UAV. The members of the team, whose testing flights have proven to be successful, is made up of students from the Department of Computer Engineering and Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, where they carry out multidisciplinary studies.

The Team members are as follows:

Ezgi Topcu (Team Captain) – Electrical and Electronics Engineering 3rd Year Student
Emin Kaan Güreşçi - Electrical and Electronics Engineering 3rd Year Student
Umut Kaya - Electrical and Electronics Engineering 3rd Year Student
Bahri Berkant İçöz - Electrical and Electronics Engineering 3rd Year Student
Okan Kartbaş - Electrical and Electronics Engineering 4th Year Student
Giray Karadeniz - Electrical and Electronics Engineering Year 1 Student
Mahmut Özer Gözü Kırmızı – 1st Year Computer Engineering Student
Ege Kıran - Computer Engineering Year 1 Student

The "Traditional Baked Pasta Day", which was made a tradition by the Kültür College Alumni Association but could not be held for the last two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was held on Sunday, July 3rd. Our graduates, teachers and administrators who missed each other showed great interest in the event. At the event the founder of Istanbul Kultur Educational Institutions & Honorary Chairperson of Istanbul Kültür University Board of Trustees Civil Engineer Fahamettin Akıngüç's documentary was screened and Honor certificates, badges and commemorative plates with logo were presented to graduates of 50 years.

At the event attended by approximately 600 of our graduates, our graduates caught up with one another after having not been able to come together for the last two years due to COVID-19.

Within the scope of the cooperation between Istanbul Kültür University Faculty of Architecture and Fatih Municipality during the 2021-22 Spring Term; in the "Architectural Design" and "Interior Architecture Design" studios and "Diploma" projects in the Department of Architecture and the Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design, students were given various subjects in the Historic Peninsula within the borders of Fatih Municipality. In this context, the students taken to the fields had the opportunity to make an on-site examination. Various presentations were also made to the students by the municipality.

Final projects and models of undergraduate students in the "Diploma" and "Architectural Design 4" stages of the Department of Architecture were exhibited at Fatih Municipality Presidency Building between 27 June and 4 July 2022.

The protocol process between the Faculty of Architecture and Fatih Municipality also continues.

The end of the academic year breakfast event of IKU Faculty of Architecture was held on Monday, June 13 with the participation of the academic staff of the Department of Architecture and the Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design.

IEEE IKU Club, which started its activities in 2012, has been an active club for about 10 years. Robotic and Automation Society (RAS), one of the IEEE IKU Club committees, maintains its place at the top with its technology breakthroughs for more than two years. IEEE IKU Club Robotic and Automation Society (RAS) committee, on the basis of committee in “IEEE TRS RAS AWARDS 22”, which is the first of the award competition given to the most active club committees throughout Turkey; received the "IEEE TRS RAS Profilic Student Branch Award 2022" and "IEEE TRS RAS Exemplary Student Branch Award 2022" awards. We congratulate our students for their outstanding achievements and wish them continued success.

IKU Technology Transfer Office (TTO) representatives and one of the IKU Faculty of Engineering lecturers Prof. Dr. Nihal Sarıer met at the Chemistry Laboratory. At the meeting held on Friday, July 1, project ideas that can be developed in thematic areas related to chemistry and collaborations within the scope of industry R&D consultancy were evaluated.

IEEE IKU Club Kuasar Team is a finalist in the TEKNOFEST'22 under the category of "Technology for the Benefit of Humanity" with their "K-Rod Smart Walking Stick" project, which aims to minimize the hardships experienced by visually impaired individuals in daily life and to enable these individuals to return to their social lives.

The IEEE IKU Club Kuasar Team, which is made up of students from the Faculty of Engineering and the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, considers working toward the application of science and mathematics necessary to solve the hardships as their principal concern. Continuing their work with the motto of "Engineers understand how things work and find ways of applying the practical use of scientific discoveries into the daily life", the team members with this mentality of the engineer also work to minimize the hardships that people face throughout their lives. In this context, our students, who continue their studies and their research with the awareness that disabled people face the most hardships in keeping up with the developing urban architecture, ın the later stages of their research, observed that among the disabled individuals, the visually impaired experienced the most severe problems. Our students, who observed that it is very difficult for the visually impaired individuals to continue their daily lives without help, continue their studies by taking the concern of bettering the situation of the visually impaired individuals at the center of it.

Although there are many smart canes designed for visually impaired individuals in the market, such products cannot meet the needs of visually impaired individuals due to their underdeveloped hardware and technology. Therefore, they are not widely preferred. Developed by the IEEE IKU Club Kuasar Team, the K-Rod walking stick has all the features found in existing smart canes but differs from these existing devices with its first time ever utilized artificial intelligence technology, and object identification, image processing, indoor positioning, mobile application features. Features developed by our team are vital advancements such as the location of public transit stations, the vehicles passing through that stop and the transit information of those vehicles, the current location and general transit information from the time of travel, emergency notification (notifying the 112-emergency service and the relatives of the user in the cases of falls, crashes, injuries, and disappearances). Another significant feature that distinguishes K-Rod from other existing smart canes is that it is the first to allow the user to change the feedback and distance sensitivities with sound, vibration, and audio commands, completely modifiable specific to the user's own preference, with the mobile application. One of the chief concerns of the team is to ease the usage experience with the materials used in the construction of K-Rod, which are innovatively designed.

The IEEE IKU Club continues to put its stamp on the TEKNOFEST 2022 Medium Altitude Rocket Competition. After our LUPUS Rocket Team, which competed as a finalist at TEKNOFEST 2021, the newly established Astra Rocket Team with its brand new and dynamic staff managed to become a finalist at TEKNOFEST 2022 with a score of 922.5 out of 1055.

Astra Rocket Team is a Finalist with a High Score

The hard effort and meticulous work they showed for a long time have put our students in the finalist seat. Our team, which reached the final stage by passing the first stage among hundreds of teams, achieved a very high score by getting 922.5 out of 1055 points and got one step closer to the flight.

Glass fiber and high-quality aluminum materials were used in the production of the rocket. In order to further increase the signal transmittance, using fiber glass in the upper body was preferred. The PCB used in the produced avionics system reflects a completely original design that our students produce with their own means. The requirements for the competition in the field of software were fulfilled by our students, who are still studying in the 1st grade of the Department of Computer Engineering, without getting help from outside.

CEO of the crowdfunding platform Fonkolay and World Bank E. Advisor Dr. Yavuz Selim Sılay visited IKU Technology Transfer Office (TTO) on Tuesday, July 5th. Dr. Sılay explained how the platform, which aims to support entrepreneurs in capital, will also support the opening of start-ups to Borsa Istanbul and Nasdaq. In order to bring together academic stakeholders in need of the ecosystem, collaboration opportunities were also evaluated with Yavuz Selim Sılay, who is also a member of the Rutgers University Advisory Board.

The article titled "A New Organizational Agility Assessment Approach Applied in the Logistics Industry", prepared by one of the academicians in the Department of Industrial Engineering, Assist. Prof. Zeynep Gergin and her graduation project students Mehmet Miraç Ak, Eren Çolak, Mustafa Kayalar and Can Deniz Yavaşoğlu, has been published in the "Business Studies Journal". You can reach the related article at https://www.isarder.org/index.php/isarder/article/view/1696.

IKU Technology Transfer Office (TTO) will organize an event to inform the participants about the "TUBITAK-TEYDEB 1505 Program of University Industry Cooperation Support". The event, in which TEYDEB (Technology and Innovation Support Programs Headship & TUBITAK) Scientific Programs Specialist Hamit Taş will be the speaker, will be held on Wednesday, July 20, between 10:00 and 12:00 on Microsoft Teams.