Theme: Blink of an Eye

An average human being blinks every 4 seconds - that's 15 times a minute, 900 times an hour, 21,600 times a day. This seemingly insignificant reflex is something we don't give it a single thought about. Much like other things that can occur in a "blink of an eye" - disasters, economic fluctuations, innovative ideas, dreams - we are oblivious to the action of blinking itself. Guided by the theme "Blink of an Eye" we hope to illuminate the rapid, unpredictable and uncontrollable "blinks" of life.

Sabanci University
Orta Mah. Universite Cad. NO:27
Orhanli Tuzla
Istanbul, İstanbul, 34956
Turkey

Emre Arolat

Architect

Emre Arolat is the founder of EAA, Emre Arolat Archirtects. His projects with EAA have won the 2005 Mies van der Rohe Award for European Architecture (Highly Commended), in 2006 the AR Awards for Emerging Architecture (Highly Commended), in 2010 the Cityscape Dubai Awards, in 2011 the MIPIM AR Future Projects Awards, in 2011 the Green Good Design Awards and the WAF) Awards: in 2012 for Future Projects-Education Category with AGU City Campus and in 2013 the Completed Buildings-Religion Buildings Category with the Sancaklar Mosque, in 2014 for Future Projects-Leisure Led Category with Antakya Museum Hotel and for Completed Buildings-Shopping Category with Yalıkavak Palmarina. He also received the National Architecture Awards in the category of “Design” and “Building” in 1992, 2002, 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2014. He has also won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2010 with Ipekyol Textile Factory Building. He was one of the two curators of the I. Istanbul Design Biennial in 2012.

Kaan Göksal

Kaan defines himself as a creative, passionate, productive, curious, collaborative team player who likes to take risks. He is a maker with altruistic goals and a great vision. He founded the first Robotics and Makers Club in Robert College, and gave a lecture at a 3D Printing & Robotics Summer Course. Even though he was not allowed to take a programming course at his high school, Kaan self-educated himself, and learned SolidWorks, Arduino and 3D Printing. He made a 3D Printer, a quadrocopter, tracked rover and many other robots. Kaan is teaching programming, 3D printing & Design in his high-school to share his success and knowledge. He is not only a hobbyist and a teacher but also an entrepreneur. When Kaan was a junior, he founded one of the first Internet of Things companies in Turkey with three other friends. His company, called “Connecthing”, develops IoT products. Their first product is a smart plug that is specializes in energy efficiency.

Özge Akbulut

Özge Akbulut is an Assistant Professor at Sabanci University since February 2012. She received her B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering Program at Sabanci University (2004). Her PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2009) focused on cost-effective fabrication of biomolecular devices and surface science. Özge continued her studies as a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University (2009–2011) on developing tools/techniques for resource-limited settings. The company that she cofounded, Surgitate, produces synthetic organ models for surgery simulation and recently won TUBITAK’s Entrepreneurial Support Grant. Surgitate is also the first company to receive investment from Arya Women’s Investment Platform and Inovent through Sakip Sabanci Grant for Entrepreneurs. Özge is the recipient of MIT’s “Presidential Fellowship” (2004), Schlumberger Foundation’s “Faculty for the Future Award” (2011), and L’Oreal/UNESCO Turkey’s “Women in Science Fellowship” (2013).

Sevnur Malik

Sevnur prefers to use three words to decribe herself on Twitter: tea, marketing, startups… After graduated from Boğaziçi Üniversity BA in 2010, she joined Unilever as a marketing person. After very long hours of work she resigned from the company. She worked for a digital business development agency, then she worked for internet projects at Turk Telekom, where she is currently working as a part of Digital Strategy and Business Development team at most of her time. She met Gizem Torun; another tea lover and travel enthusiast at Türk Telekom and together they launched the first and the biggest tea website which they describe as a Tea Movement in Feb 2014; caycek.com. They wrote about 250 articles for Çay Çek, tasted hundreds of different teas. While the tea stuff was continuing she visited San Francisco and studied Entrepreneurship at Stanford during summer. Then she started a tea mastery certification course at International Tea Masters Association. She drinks lots of tea everyday.

Tuncay Tekdemir

Tuncay Tekdemir is currently the CEO of PALFOOD in Azerbaijan and the father of three. He is also an extreme sports enthusiast, especially motorbiking, paragliding, snowboarding and diving. These activities have also directly influenced his work ethos and more importantly life. He believes that there is a strong connection between the extra activities that one takes part in and how it affects their leadership and work ethics. Living by the proverb that a smooth sea never made a skillful sailor literally.