About Me

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU). I am also a member of ADIN Lab at SDU. My research focuses on Machine Learning, Computer Vision, and Reinforcement Learning, with a particular interest in the visual continuous control problem.

Before joining SDU, I earned my B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Engineering from Istanbul Technical University (ITU) in 2018, 2020, and 2024, respectively. I graduated second in my class during my B.Sc., reflecting my dedication to academic excellence. During my M.Sc., I worked as a Research and Teaching Assistant at ITU, which enhanced my teaching experience and deepened my understanding of Computer Engineering. My research during this period centered around self-supervised GANs and their applications in image generation.

My Ph.D. journey deserves special attention. I was fortunate to be a Google DeepMind scholar at ITU, becoming the first Ph.D. graduate of this program at the university. This scholarship provided me with the privilege of connecting with international colleagues and broadening my academic network. Additionally, I received the TUBITAK 2214-A International Research Fellowship Program for PhD Students grant, which supported my one-year visiting position at SDU during my Ph.D. My research focused on discrete representation learning for images, culminating in my successfully defended Ph.D. thesis, titled "Codebook Learning: Challenges and Applications in Image Representation Learning."

Beyond academia, I have a deep passion for anime, manga, board games, and pilates. Anime and manga captivate me with their intricate storylines and compelling characters, and I enjoy exploring diverse genres within the medium. Playing board games allows me to engage in strategic thinking and friendly competition, while pilates helps me maintain both physical and mental well-being. These interests enrich my life and provide a refreshing balance to my academic pursuits.

News

(01/2025) I have started to work as a Postdoctoral Researcher in University of Southern Denmark.
(12/2024) I have succesfully defended my Ph.D. thesis, titled "Codebook Learning: Challenges and Applications in Image Representation Learning".
(07/2024) Our article EdVAE: Mitigating Codebook Collapse with Evidential Discrete Variational Autoencoders has been accepted to Pattern Recognition Journal.
(03/2024) I have attended the Machine Learning Summer School 2024 and presented our work Evidential Discrete Variational Autoencoders as poster.
(01/2024) I have started a new position as Guest PhD in ADIN Lab.
(11/2023) I have been selected to attend the Machine Learning Summer School 2024.
(09/2023) I am awarded a grant by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TUBITAK) to perform a research at University of Southern Denmark.
(09/2023) Our paper ProtoDiffusion: Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance with Prototype Learning has been accepted to ACML 2023.
(08/2023) I have attended the Mediterranean Machine Learning Summer School 2023 and presented our work Evidential Discrete Variational Autoencoders as poster.
(04/2023) I have been selected to attend the Mediterranean Machine Learning Summer School 2023.
(02/2023) Our paper Textile Pattern Generation Using Diffusion Models has been accepted to ITFC 2023.
(06/2022) Our paper UGQE: Uncertainty Guided Query Expansion has been accepted to ICPRAI 2022.
(08/2021) Our article Exploring DeshuffleGANs in Self-Supervised Generative Adversarial Networks has been accepted to Pattern Recognition Journal.
(10/2020) I have been selected as a ITU-Google DeepMind scholar.
(06/2020) Our paper Deshufflegan: A Self-Supervised Gan to Improve Structure Learning has been accepted to ICIP 2020.