Vice Presidents

Prof. Dr. Cem Güneri is the Vice President for Education at Sabancı University. He has been a faculty member at the Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences of Sabancı University since 2001. Together with the founding faculty members of the University, he has been actively involved in developing undergraduate courses, minor and graduate programs in mathematics. He has served as the Mathematics Program Coordinator, member of the Foundations Development Program Advisory Board and the University Education Committee, in addition to various other administrative responsibilities. He was the Vice Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences between 2012 and 2018, during which he took responsibilities related to educational affairs of the Faculty, including accreditation of the Faculty Programs. He has been selected for Sabancı University’s annual teaching awards for the First Year Courses and the Graduating Class several times.

Cem Güneri received his BSc degree from the Middle East Technical University and PhD degree from Louisiana State University, both in Mathematics. His research areas can be summarized as finite fields and curves defined over them, algebraic coding theory and certain cryptographic applications. As part of the research group at Sabancı University on these areas, and together with various national and international partners, he carried out active research and graduated 5 PhD and 7 MSc students.

He was an Executive Board member of the Turkish Mathematical Society between 2010 and 2018. He is a member of Turkish Mathematical Society, American Mathematical Society and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

Prof. Dr. Fuat Keyman is the Vice President for Institutional Affairs and Social Impact and Director of the Istanbul Policy Center. Keyman is a leading political scientist in Turkey and an expert on globalization, democratization, international relations, Turkey – EU relations, Turkish foreign policy, and civil society development. He is a member of the Turkish Science Academy. In 2013, he was awarded the Strategic Vision Award for Scientists by TASAM (Turkish Asian Center for Strategic Studies). He has worked as a member on the Council of Wise People as part of the Peace Process to the Kurdish issue. He also serves on advisory and editorial boards for a number of respected international and national organizations as well as for academic journals. He has been the research director for various projects, such as Peter Berger and Samuel Huntington’s Many Globalizations; Strengthening Checks and Balances in Turkey, SIDA, Sweden; Enacting European Citizenship, European Council Framework 7 Project; Mapping Civil Society in Turkey, CIVICUS; and received a prestigious grant on urbanization from the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey. Since 2002, as well as his academic work, Keyman has been sharing his ideas and analysis of Turkey in a global context through various newspaper columns and TV programs.

He is the author and editor of more nearly thirty books, including Istanbul: Living with Difference in a Global City (with Nora Fisher-Onar and Susan C. Pearce, 2018), Turkey, The Arab Spring and Beyond (with Bülent Aras, 2016), Global Turkey in Europe 3: Democracy, Trade, and the Kurdish Question in Turkey-EU Relations (2015), Democracy, Identity and Foreign Policy in Turkey (with Şebnem Gümüşçü, 2014); Global Turkey in Europe 2: Energy, Migration, Civil Society and Citizenship Issues in Turkey-EU Relations (2014); Global Turkey in Europe: Political, Economic, and Foreign Policy Dimensions of Turkey’s Evolving Relationship with the EU (2013); Remaking Turkey (in Turkish, 2013); Symbiotic Antagonisms: Competing Nationalisms in Turkey (with Ayşe Kadıoğlu, 2011); Cities: The Transformation of Anatolia, the Future of Turkey (2010); Competing Nationalism in Turkey (2010), Turkey in a Globalizing World (2010); Remaking Turkey, Globalization, Alternative Modernities and Democracy (2008); Turkish Politics in a Changing World (with Ziya Öniş, 2007), Citizenship in a Global World: European Questions and Turkish Experiences (2005); Changing World, Transforming Turkey (2005); Globalization, State, Identity/Difference: Toward a Critical Social Theory of International Relations (1997). Keyman has also authored numerous articles published in prestigious, peer-reviewed international journals such as Journal of Democracy, Third World Quarterly, European Journal of Social Theory, Theory Culture & Society, and Review of International Political Economy, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies.

Prior to joining Sabancı University, Keyman taught in the Department of International Relations at Koç University between 2002 and 2010, and in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at Bilkent University between 1994 and 2002. He was also Visiting Professor at Carleton University in the summer of 1997. Keyman holds several post-doctoral fellowships from Wellesley College and Harvard University He received his PhD in Political Science with a concentration in International Relations and Comparative Politics from Carleton University. He completed his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey.

Professor Dr. Mehmet Yıldız is the Vice President for Research and Development at Sabancı University. Born in Diyarbakır in 1972, and received his primary, secondary and high school education in Ereğli/Zonguldak, Turkey, he completed his undergraduate education in 1996 with the first rank in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering Department at Yıldız Technical University and received his MSc. degree also from Metallurgical and Materials Engineering department at Istanbul Technical University in 2000. Between 1996-2000, he worked in two different companies as an R&D engineer and a project manager in the fields of welding and non-destructive testing. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in 2005 from Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Victoria, BC, Canada in the fields of computational fluid dynamics and semiconductor single crystal growth and then worked as a research associate and lecturer in the same department until 2007.

In 2007, he joined Sabancı University, Faculty of Engineering Natural Sciences as a faculty member in Materials Science and Engineering Program and since 2013, has been leading the effort of establishing Sabancı University-Integrated Manufacturing Technologies Research and Application Center and its industrial leg, Composite Technologies Center of Excellence with Kordsa. Currently, he is serving as the founding director of these centers, and a deputy Chairperson in the board of directors of Kordsa Company. He sits in the R&D advisory board of Kastamonu Entegre. He contributed to the establishment of Manufacturing Engineering graduate program at Sabancı University.

Dr. Yıldız's areas of expertise include advanced composite materials, nanocomposites, structural health monitoring and computational mechanics. He published more than 85 SCI indexed high impact factor journals, 8 book chapters, prepared and presented over 135 conference papers and graduated more than 28 MSc. and Ph.D. students.