Biography

I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Birmingham, where I am a part of the Socio-Technical Systems group within the School of Computer Science. Previously, I was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Southern California, working with Salman Avestimehr. I earned my M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 2020 and 2022, respectively, under the supervision of Sennur Ulukus. Prior to that, I completed my B.S. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Bilkent University, Turkey, in 2016.

My research interests span machine learning, generative artificial intelligence, human-centred computing, distributed systems, wireless communications, networks, and information theory. My current research focuses on reliable and explainable large language models (LLMs), privacy-preserving machine learning, responsible data economics for collaborative machine learning, timely information exchange in distributed systems, and the semantics of information.

I received the 2024 CTTC Andrea Goldsmith Young Scholars Award for my contributions to age of information, low-latency communications, distributed computation and learning. My work has received multiple best paper recognitions, and I was awarded the George Harhalakis Outstanding Graduate Student Award from the Institute for Systems Research at the University of Maryland in 2021 for my doctoral research on timely information delivery in large networks, distributed computation, and machine learning. In my highly interdisciplinary research, I utilize tools and techniques from optimization, machine learning, statistics, applied cryptography, and information and coding theories.

I have been fortunate to collaborate with Deniz Gunduz (Imperial College London), Athina Markopoulou (University of California, Irvine), Songze Li (Southeast University), Hessam Mahdavifar (Northeastern University), Melih Bastopcu (Bilkent University), Yupeng Zhang (UIUC), and Alkan Soysal (Virginia Tech) during my studies.

My CV can be found here, last updated in December 2024.

Education

• Ph.D. student in Electrical and Computer Engineering
  University of Maryland, College Park, Aug 2016 to Dec 21
  Advisor: Sennur Ulukus
  Thesis: Age of Information in Large Networks, Distributed Computation and Learning

• B.S in Electrical and Electronics Engineering
  Bilkent University, Sep 2011 to Jan 2016

Awards and Honors

• CTTC Andrea Goldsmith Young Scholars Award, IEEE Communications Society, Apr 2024.

• George Harhalakis Outstanding Graduate Student Award, Institute of Systems Research, University of Maryland, Sep 2021.

• Best Student Paper Award - First Place, IEEE International Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications, Sep 2021.

• IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC) Student Grant, Awarded by NSF, May 2021.

• Best Student Paper Award - Second Place, 54th Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, Nov 2020.

• Future Faculty Program Fellowship, University of Maryland, Jan 2020 - Dec 2021.

• Jacob K. Goldhaber Travel Grant, University of Maryland, Dec 2019.

• Best Student Paper Award - Finalist, 53rd Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, Nov 2019.

• Clark School of Engineering Distinguished Graduate Fellowship, University of Maryland, Aug 2016 to Aug 2017.

• Research Excellence Award, Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Bilkent University, May 2016.

Service