SAPHIRE Newsletter Issue nr.1 - Middle East Technical University and the Software R&D Center

The Middle East Technical University (METU) (http://www.metu.edu.tr) is the leading technical university in Turkey.

The Software Research and Development Center (SRDC) (http://www.srdc.metu.edu.tr) is established by the Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) in October 1991 and is operating under the Faculty of Engineering in METU.

METU-SRDC is involved in a number of research and development projects supported by the government, industrial companies, international organizations and the European Commission.

METU-SRDC has expertise on Semantic Web Technologies, Web Services, Ontologies, P2P networks, Agent Technologies, Semantic Interoperability, e-Health, Sensor Networks, GRID Systems. This research institute is formed with the following mission statement;

“Our mission is to combine knowledge, hard work and enthusiasm in the areas of electronic business and Internet technologies to be able to contribute to the research and development activities in Turkey, and in EU by exploiting the outstanding young potential of Turkey.”

For this aim, METU-SRDC is utilizing the great potential in METU, especially in the Information Technologies field.

As METU-SRDC is operating with the Computer Engineering department, there is a great human resource potential both for part-time and full-time employees.

With the provided summer practice options, students can have a chance to feel the R&D soul and the enthusiastic ones can continue as the part-time employees during their undergraduate studies.

After finalizing the undergraduate studies, it is served an option as a full-time employment while continuing their graduate studies parallel with the research & development issues in the center.

Graduate students can finalize their master thesis or PhD thesis with their research & development work in the METU-SRDC.

It has been achieved over 75 master/PhD thesis in parallel with the researches in METU-SRDC. Furthermore, it has been published 98 articles about the research achieved in METU-SRDC since 1994.

METU-SRDC is also a great potential to provide the academy-industry collaboration. METU has a techno polis (http://www.metutech.metu.edu.tr/) in its campus with various IT companies and over 1400 employee power.

METU-SRDC collaborates with industrial companies from this region in research projects to maximize the academy-industry collaborative work.

METU Techno Polis