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Overview of my academic and professional background. For more details download the PDF version.

Basics

Name Gürkan Soykan
Title AI Researcher, Software Engineer
Email grkansoykan@gmail.com
Url https://www.linkedin.com/in/gurkan-soykan
Summary I am an AI scientist and researcher with a strong computer science and natural sciences foundation. Currently pursuing a PhD at Wageningen University, focusing on adaptive digital twins for precision agriculture.

Work

  • 2024.07 - Present
    Ph.D. Candidate
    Wageningen University, Information Technology Group
    Engaged in developing Adaptive Digital Twins for Precision Agriculture, integrating sensor data with AI techniques such as deep learning and reinforcement learning.
  • 2020.09 - 2024.07
    AI Researcher
    KUIS AI Center, Koç University
    During my masters: Developed various AI projects in the domain of comics, focusing on multimodal ai and for a year focused on multlingual NLP
    • ComicBERT
    • Spatially Augmented Comic-MTL
    • Comics Text+
    • Identity-Aware Comic Char. Re-Id.
    • Self-Supervised Comic Face Generation
    • Multi-modal Emotion Recognition
    • Multilingual Instruction Tuning
  • 2019.09 - 2020.05
    iOS Developer & Backend Engineer
    Carla Car Rental
    Maintained the iOS application and led the development of rebranding releases, integrating APIs from 20+ car rental suppliers into the backend stack.
  • 2018.09 - 2019.09
    iOS Developer
    NaylaLabs
    Contributed to the development of 8 iOS applications, ranging from social networking to child development apps.
  • 2018.02 - Present
    Software Developer
    Freelance Developer
    Worked on various projects including mobile applications and backend development. Notable projects include Blinq, Gökçeada tour guide, and financial chart UI for Fingaroo.

Education

  • 2024.07 - Present

    The Netherlands

    PhD
    Wageningen University
    Information Technology
  • 2023.09 - 2024.07

    Istanbul, Turkey

    PhD
    Koç University
    Computer Science & Engineering
  • 2020.09 - 2023.06

    Istanbul, Turkey

    MSc
    Koç University
    Computer Science & Engineering
  • 2013.09 - 2018.06

    Istanbul, Turkey

    BSc
    Sabancı University
    Computer Science & Engineering
  • 2012.09 - 2017.06

    Istanbul, Turkey

    BSc
    Sabancı University
    Materials Science & Nano Engineering

Projects

  • 2021.01 - 2023.06
    ComicVerse: Expanding the Frontiers of AI in Comic Books with Holistic Understanding
    Master's thesis that consists of four parts to create holistic pipeline (from comic page to neural representation of the panels) for contextual comic understanding
    • A Comprehensive Gold Standard and Benchmark for Comics Text Detection and Recognition
    • Spatially Augmented Speech Bubble to Character Association via Comic Multi-Task Learning
    • Identity-Aware Semi-Supervised Learning for Comic Character Re-Identification
    • ComicBERT: A Transformer Model and Pre-training Strategy for Contextual Understanding in Comics
  • 2021.01 - 2021.06
    Self-Supervised Face Generation using Panel Context Information
    Developed a model to generate masked faces of characters in sequential comics frames using GANs and VAEs.
  • 2021.10 - 2022.01
    Multimodal Emotion Recognition on Drawings
    Improved VisualBERT to recognize emotions using visual and linguistic cues in comic scenes.

Skills

Programming Languages
Python
JavaScript
TypeScript
Swift
Objective-C
Kotlin
C++
Julia
Machine Learning Frameworks
PyTorch
TensorFlow
Knet
Mobile Development
iOS Development
Flutter

Languages

Turkish
Native speaker
English
Fluent

Interests

Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Deep Learning
Natural Language Processing
Software Engineering
Backend Development
Mobile Development