Commented CV
Education
- Ph.D. in Cognitive Science, 10/2024 - Present
- Middle East Technical University, Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering
- M.Sc. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, 10/2021 - 08/2024
- Middle East Technical University, Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering
- CGPA: 4.00 / 4.00
- Specialization Area: Signal Processing
- Thesis: Superelliptical Extended Target Tracking with Contour Measurements
- Supervisor: Dr Emre Ozkan
- B.Sc. in Mathematics (Double Major), 10/2017 - 07/2022
- Middle East Technical University, Department of Mathematics
- High Honour, CGPA: 3.87 / 4.00
- B.Sc. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, 10/2016 - 01/2021
- Middle East Technical University, Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering
- High Honour, CGPA: 3.76 / 4.00
- Specialization Area: Biomedical Engineering
- High School Graduate, 09/2012 - 06/2016
- Ankara Private Tevfik Fikret High School
Research Experience
- 09/2019 - Present: Researcher
- METU EEE Sensor Fusion Research Group
- PI: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Emre Özkan
- Under the supervision of Dr Emre Özkan, I studied statistical signal processing methods. My two main projects involved extended target tracking \cite{Superellipse_RBPF} and information fusion with empirical density approximations.
- 07/2019 - 09/2019: Summer Intern in Research
- Karunya Institute of Technology and Sciences, Department of Instrumentation Engineering
- Supervisors: Dr. M.S.P. Subathra & Dr. S. Thomas George
- I proposed a new feature extraction method based on Local Binary Patterns, and showed that it was useful in a classification task with a shallow neural network \cite{Parkinsons}.
- Wanting to experience being part of a research project, I decided to go to a research internship (and an adventure) via IAESTE, and the project in KITS seemed interesting (although that’s not the finalized project). I got to ask research questions with the help of my supervisors, and they helped me follow my own ideas based on the material I had, which produced this paper.
- 07/2018 - 08/2018: Summer Intern
- IBM Turkey, Istanbul Office
- I observed the process of data center migration on the field and helped the team with various tasks. I implemented a demonstrative use of the IBM Cloud services in an Internet-of-Things application.
- This was my first ever internship, and I value that it was not in research but in industry. I didn’t do anything noteworthy if you ask me (understandable, as I had just finished 2nd year so I didn’t know much), but still I enjoyed my time there and learned some stuff, especially about working in an office/company environment. It helped me see what to look for in a company if I were ever to switch to working in the industry.
Leadership and Teaching Experience
- February 2022 - Present: Teaching Assistant
- Middle East Technical University
- Although the job title is “research assistant,” it is a teaching assistantship position, meaning I am TA for various courses. Here are the courses I have worked in so far:
- - EE230 Probability and Random Variables
- - EE306 Signals and Systems II
- - EE361 Electromechanical Energy Conversion I.
- - EE415 Introduction to Medical Imaging.
- - EE416 Biomedical Signals, Instrumentation and Measurements.
- - EE499 Vector Space Methods in Signal Processing.
- (Check out the MATLAB tutorial I prepared for EE230 and EE306 courses!)
- July 2023: Lead Teaching Assistant
- Neuromatch Academy Computational Neuroscience track, Lead TA (Certificate)
- In addition to the regular TA responsibilities, I was also tasked with leading seven other regular TAs. I assisted with their training and guided them regarding pod management along with other administrative responsibilities, such as dealing with TA absences.
- July 2021: Teaching Assistant
- Neuromatch Academy Computational Neuroscience track, Tutorial TA (Certificate)
- Having enjoyed being an interactive student immensely the year before, I wanted to become a TA in NMA-CN. I was responsible for a pod in NMA-CN online summer school. I helped them go over tutorials about fundamental topics on computational neuroscience and develop a project, answered their questions about the coding exercises and the underlying theory.
- Here’s a Twitter thread on a funny incident I went through at the end of my TAship this year.
- Fall 2018 & Spring 2020: Part-Time Student Assistant
- METU Department of Mathematics
- I was the student assistant for the course MA153 Calculus for Mathematics Students I (Fall 2018) and MA154 Calculus for Mathematics Students II (Spring 2020); and I graded weekly assignments and provided feedback to students.
Organizations, Trainings & Others
May 2022 - Present: Volunteer at Neuromatch
- 2019 - 2021: Coordinator in IAESTE LC METU
- I was responsible for the acquisition and organization of work offers from around Ankara for IAESTE LC METU, trained newcomers on company relations, and hosted the incoming interns.
Summer 2020: Student in Neuronal Dynamics for Embodied Cognition
- Summer 2020: Interactive Student in Neuromatch Academy
- I participated in a 3-week long, intense summer school as an interactive student, which entailed preparing a project. In the project, we used linear models from scikit-learn Python library and worked on preprocessed fMRI data.
- NMA became a cornerstone in defining my scientist-to-be, with its inclusivity and commitment to open science. At the end of these three weeks, I was already keen on remaining a part of NMA, somehow.
January 2020: Participant in 4th HBP Student Conference on Interdisciplinary Brain Research
- Fall 2019: Instructor for Mathematics Workshop
- I was offered an opportunity to deliver a workshop on mathematics to a group of second-year at my high school Ankara Private Tevfik Fikret High School. More in side gigs.
- 05/2017 – 05/2018: Team Leader and Director of Communications for TEDxMETUAnkara 2017 “Grand Illusions”
- I booked speakers and worked with them on their speeches and was responsible for the overall operations of the event. I also designed and managed the event website on Wix. More in side gigs.
Publications
Yurdakul, O. C., Subathra, M. S. P., & George, S. T. (2020). Detection of Parkinson’s Disease from gait using Neighborhood Representation Local Binary Patterns. Biomedical Signal Processing and Control, 62, 102070.
Yurdakul, O. C., Çetinkaya, M., Çelebi, E., & Özkan, E. (2024). A Rao-Blackwellized Particle Filter for Superelliptical Extended Target Tracking. Accepted for publication.
Languages
- Natural:
- Turkish (Native)
- English (Proficient)
- French (Previously proficient, needs some practice talking)
- Latin (Aspiring beginner for absolutely no reason at all)
- Formal:
- MATLAB (Experienced)
- Python (Experienced)
- WebPPL (Took a course that used it)
- ANSI Common LISP (Took a course on it once, loved it)
- C (Took my mandatory programming course in it, did not like it. I only use it if I have to, meaning when I’m using an Arduino board.)
- and various other languages I learned at one point but did not dwell on too much, such as R and C++.
See my blog post for more.
