SUSTAINABILITY

Izmir Institute of Technology (IZTECH) students and graduates achieved great success at the Izmir leg of the world’s largest Aviation, Space and Technology Festival, TEKNOFEST, held between September 27 and October 1.

In the TEKNOFEST Entrepreneurship Competition, the Best Entrepreneurship and Acceleration Category Best Entrepreneurship Awards and the Deneyap Idea Marathon Sustainable Cities Category third place went to IZTECH students and graduates.

While the team of INOPOLYME, a student of the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at IZTECH, Ayşe Bıçakçı, was deemed worthy of the “Pre-Incubation Category Best Startup Award,” the team of SALTY ENERJİ, a graduate of the Department of Chemical Engineering at IZTECH, Pelin Keleş, a graduate student at IZTECH, Özgür Enes Taytaş, a doctoral student at IZTECH, Gözde Gözel, and graduates Berat Furkan Sümay and Furkan Baymış, was deemed worthy of the “Acceleration Category Best Startup Award.” In addition, Toprak Göçer, a student at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at IZTECH, came in third in the “Sustainable Cities Category” in the Deneyap Idea Marathon, where 913 team applications were received and 28 teams competed as finalists.

Rector Prof. Dr. Yusuf Baran, who made statements about the success of IZTECH students at TEKNOFEST, stated that TEKNOFEST greatly contributes to Turkey’s high technology production with its own assets and noted the following: “As a university that works with the aim of becoming Turkey’s technology base and continues its strategy in this direction, we attach great importance to events that determine their focus as technology. Our aim is to raise social leaders, entrepreneurs and scientists who will play an active role in Turkey’s process of becoming a leader in global competition. But the most important thing for us is to produce end products of universal importance with our entrepreneurial graduates who will create their own employment and turn the import-export balance in our country’s favor. Our dear students and graduates achieved high-level successes at TEKNOFEST, which exhibited the work done in our country’s Domestic and National Industrial production and motivated the researchers and young people working on this subject. I heartily congratulate each of them and wish them continued success. “On behalf of myself and my country, I would like to thank everyone who contributed to the realization of TEKNOFEST, which brought dynamism to our country and region and acted as an intermediary for large technology companies to support young entrepreneurs.”