Dr. Yaşar Safkan
Born 29 May 1973 in Ankara, Turkey
Military Service completed in July 1999
Summary
There are points of view to look at my career: One is that I have experience in many diverse fields.
The other is that, I have never held on to any job for long. Both are correct. The common reason is
that I am curious about many things, and unexpectedly quick to learn and master any subject I get into.
Over time, I have found out that I am a "helper" more than anything else; this makes me
an excellent teacher in the classroom, and a great leader and coach in the workplace.
For the last few years, I have been leveraging my combination of technical expertise and software
management wisdom working as a consultant. While I find consulting rewarding in many aspects, I
am ever vigilant for new, exciting opportunities to get back into the game.
Work Experience
10/2012
-
08/2013
Safkan Software & Consulting, İstanbul, Turkey
Software & IT Management Consultant
Select clients:
09/2001
-
01/2017
Boğaziçi Üniversitesi, İstanbul, Turkey
Department of Physics -- Instructor (Part-time)
Taught mostly computer science courses to physics students
05/2012
-
10/2012
Digital Generation Banking, Denizbank, İstanbul, Turkey
Technology Consultant
11/2009
-
04/2012
Intertech, İstanbul, Turkey
Software Architectural Consultant
- Manager, Data Warehouse Infrastructure Team (6 people)
- Manager, Mobile Banking Team (12 people)
04/2008
-
10/2009
Google Ireland Ltd., Dublin, Ireland
Site Reliability Engineer
In charge of Google storage systems (GFS) -- roughly 80% of the machine fleet.
Worked on implementation, deployment, monitoring, debugging of multiple
systems and projects.
03/2005
-
03/2008
Overteam Technologies, İstanbul, Turkey
Founding partner & CTO
Co-created and led the initial development of the web publishing/social
networking/blogging site
www.azbuz.com
Led the initial development for the Web 2.0 dating site
www.gayet.net
04/2007
-
11/2007
Doğan Sosyal Platform A.Ş., İstanbul, Turkey
Founding partner & CTO
09/2003
-
01/2006
Yeditepe Üniversitesi, İstanbul, Turkey
Department of Computer Engineering -- Instructor
02/2003
-
08/2003
GVZ Ses Tanıma Teknolojileri, İstanbul, Turkey
Software Development Specialist
Re-implemented speech recognition engine
with better performance
and much smaller memory footprint
02/2001
-
01/2003
Noktalar A.Ş., İstanbul, Turkey
Software Engineer
Worked on development of www.gizlihayran.com (now inactive)
Implemented a client for Turkcell infrastructure for sending and
receiving SMS messages
Qualifications & Skills
Experienced in taking projects from conception to completion, acting as architect, manager and programmer as necessary in the process.
Highly knowledgeable in web application architectures - end-to-end, from hardware to the browser.
Natural leader with magnetic personality -- able to manage highly skilled people to create
a harmonious team and efficient work environment.
Life long learner and skilled teacher in a wide range of subjects. Able to train people and teams very effectively; both in the long run and as crash-courses.
Skilled at managing high stress and very effective at taking action in emergencies and crisis situations.
Skilled software engineer/architect (C, Java, Python, C++, Objective C) and Linux system administrator.
Academic Works
Journal Papers
"Lifetime Analysis of Reliable Wireless
Sensor Networks" S. Baydere,Y. Safkan, O. Durmaz, IEICE
Transactions on Communications, Vol. E88-B No. 6 (2005)
"A Corpus-Based Concatenative Speech Synthesis System for Turkish"
Haşim Sak, Tunga Güngör, and Yaşar Safkan, Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences,
14(2):209 223 (2006)
"Differential Cross-Section for Neutron-Proton
Bremsstrahlung." Y. Safkan, T. Akdogan,
W.A. Franklin, J.L. Matthews, W.M. Schmitt, V.V. Zelevinsky,
P.A.M. Gram, T.N. Taddeucci, S.A. Wender, S.F. Pate,
Phys. Rev. C 75:031001 (2007)
Courses Taught
Yeditepe Üniversitesi:
Algorithms and Computer Programming
Data Structures
Digital Electronics
Microprocessors and Microcontrollers
Advanced Probability Theory for Discrete Systems
Boğaziçi Üniversitesi:
Web Technologies with Java for Physicists I/II
Thermodynamics, Waves, Optics and Modern Physics
Programming with C
Thermal Properties of Matter
Algorithms and Data Structures
Problem Solving in Physics
Quantum Computing
Information and Entropy
Database Management Systems
Simulations in Physics
Education
1995
-
2001
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Ph.D. in Physics (Experimental Nuclear Physics)
Thesis Title: Neutron-Proton Bremsstrahlung
1991
-
1995
Boğaziçi Üniversitesi, İstanbul, Turkey
B.S. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering
GPA: 3.83/4.00 - Second place in graduating class
B.S. in Physics
Double Major Program - First place in the Double Major Program
1988
-
1991
Özel Beyoğlu Musevi Lisesi, İstanbul, Turkey
1984
-
1988
TED Ankara Koleji Orta Kısmı, Ankara, Turkey
Languages
Turkish (native), English (near native)