For Students Who Wish to Do Their Graduation Project with Me

1How to Get a Graduation Project

• To carry out a comprehensive project, you need to start early. I recommend that students who will graduate in the spring semester meet with me at the end of their third year, before the summer break begins.
• Students who will graduate at the end of the fall semester should meet with me at the end of the previous fall semester.
• Before coming to the meeting to request a graduation project, please send me your transcript. It tells me in which areas you are more successful.
• When you apply for a graduation project, you should already have determined a topic, as described below.
• Each faculty member can supervise only a limited number of graduation project students.
• I announce my office hours for students every semester in my weekly schedule. Because of my other duties, I am not able to meet students outside these hours.

2Topic of the Graduation Project

• You can do your graduation project on either software or hardware topics.
• I announce some graduation project topics in advance. Most recently proposed topics: Graduation Project Topics
• However, the number of these topics may not be sufficient. I prefer my students to choose the subject they want to work on and the application they want to develop themselves, and to come to me with a proposal.
• For ideas on software projects: Google Summer of Code.

3What Makes a Graduation Project Successful

A successful graduation project should have the following characteristics:

• The engineering knowledge gained during university education should be used properly, and new knowledge should be added to it.
  • If the project is on software, it must contain original code developed using the object-oriented approach.
  • The software should include one or more "intelligent" algorithms, such as decision making, learning or computation.
  • The principles of object-oriented design should be followed. A flexible, easily extensible design should be the goal.
  • Software engineering methods should be applied.
  • In hardware projects, a circuit should be designed, and the program parts that control this circuit should be written.
  • The performance and usability of the system developed in the project should be tested, and its strengths should be demonstrated.
  • New knowledge should be acquired through research carried out during the project, and the project should be enriched with this knowledge.
• It is preferred that the application developed in the project contains an interesting and original idea.
• Another reason for preference is that a usable product can be produced.

4Funding and Competitions

• TÜBİTAK supports projects of university students. You can find information about these programs on the TÜBİTAK website:
  • 2209-A Research Projects Support Program for Undergraduate Students
  • 2209-B Industry-Oriented Research Projects Support Program for Undergraduate Students
• Some organizations also hold project competitions and offer various opportunities to participating students. One of them is the international Imagine Cup competition.
• I recommend that students check the Turkish websites of companies such as IBM and Microsoft to see whether a competition is being organized that year.