Since the 1990s, each year the Bilkent University Electrical and Electronics Engineering (EEE) Department and the IEEE Bilkent Student Branch organize the Graduate Research Conference (GRC), where Bilkent EEE graduate and selected undergraduate students present their work in a festival of information sharing. During this day-long event, Bilkent EEE graduate students describe their state-of-the-art research projects in interactive oral and poster presentations, and selected undergraduate students present their course project demos.
The 36th GRC occurred face-to-face on Tuesday, 20 January 2026, in the EE Building. The event offered a day full of knowledge sharing and a unique opportunity for undergraduate students to experience the world of research in engineering and science conducted in the EEE Department at Bilkent University.
This year’s schedule included 48 oral presentations, grouped into 12 sessions, with three sessions concurrent in each of the four time slots. In the oral presentations, the graduate students and postdoctoral researchers shared their novel research projects and answered questions from the audience. Various areas of electrical and electronics engineering were covered, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, biomedical technologies, communications and networking, control and robotics, electromagnetics, electronics, integrated circuits and systems, nanotechnology, optics and photonics, and signal processing. More than 200 participants, including Bilkent EEE graduate and undergraduate students, attended the conference.
During the two poster sessions, attendees had the opportunity to interact with 42 presenters and learn more about research in the Bilkent EE department. The conference also included some invited poster/demo presentations by EE undergraduate students.
The event jury awarded the selected graduate students three “Best Oral Presentation” awards and one “Best Poster Presentation” award.
Prof. Sinan Gezici and Asst. Prof. Aykut Koç of the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering chaired the conference. EE graduate students Ahmet Safa Öztürk and Arda Koşay, along with the undergraduate students İpek Zahide Demirbaş (EE/II) and Can Güler (CS/II) from the IEEE Bilkent Student Branch, organized the event.
The event offered a day full of knowledge sharing and a unique opportunity for undergraduate students to experience the world of research in engineering and science. Participants also had the opportunity to interact with researchers from other universities and professionals from leading engineering companies in Turkey.
More information about the GRC can be found at https://ieee.bilkent.edu.tr/grc/grc2026/index.html
Below are the awarded graduate students from the conference:
Best Oral Presentation Awards:
- Simultaneous Direct T₂ Mapping and Distortion Correction via a Physics-Aware Deep Network in Blip-Reversed Multi-Echo Planar Imaging
Abdallah Zaid Alkilani, Mustafa Utkur, Cemre Ariyurek, Sila Kurugol, Tolga Çukur, Onur Afacan, Emine Ulku Saritas
- Timely Information for Strategic Persuasion
Ahmet Buğra Gündoğan, Melih Baştopçu
- scHyperLink: Revealing Cell-Type-Specific Gene Regulation with Hypergraph Neural Networks
Emre Kulkul, Tolga Çukur, Aykut Koç
Best Poster Presentation Award:
- Enhancing Bitwise Majority Alignment via Dynamic Time Warping for Trace Reconstruction
Bahadır Öztürk, Tolga Mete Duman