Speaking & Professional Service

Invited talks, peer review and program-committee service, judging, mentorship, and professional memberships.

Peer Review & Program Committees

  • 2026

    Program Committee, AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (AIES 2026)

    Malmö, Sweden · reviewing submissions on agentic-AI governance

  • 2026

    Reviewer, IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC 2026)

    IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society

  • 2026

    Reviewer, IEEE Conference on Artificial Intelligence (CAI 2026)

    Granada, Spain

  • 2026

    Reviewer, IEEE Energy Conversion Congress & Exposition (ECCE 2026)

    Completed full review assignment (3 submissions)

  • 2026

    Program Committee / Proposal Reviewer, SciPy 2026

    Scientific Computing with Python Conference

Organizing & Chairing

  • 2026

    Organizer, Special Session: "Trustworthy and Explainable AI for Telepresence and Autonomous Robotic Systems"

    IEEE Telepresence 2026, Bristol, UK

    Special session →
  • 2026

    Session Chair, "AI and Predictive Modeling"

    IEEE SoutheastCon 2026

Invited Talks & Presentations

  • 2026

    Presenter, "CT-SAFR: Safe and Interpretable Chain-of-Thought Reasoning for Autonomous Robots"

    IEEE Conference on Artificial Intelligence (CAI 2026), Granada, Spain

    Conference program →
  • 2026

    Speaker, "AI That Matters: Trust Over Power"

    Louisville AI Week 2026

  • 2025

    Invited Speaker, "Safe and Interpretable Chain-of-Thought Reasoning for Autonomous Robots"

    2025 IEEE New Era AI World Leaders Summit · Joint Symposium on Systems, Robotics & Aerospace, Seattle, WA

  • 2019

    Speaker & Moderator, Turkey Innovation Week

    Istanbul Congress Center · audience 510,000+ · discussed deep space and science with NASA JPL astrophysicist Dr. Umut Yıldız

  • 2017

    Speaker, Turkey Innovation Week

    Istanbul Congress Center · audience 310,000+

Judging & Mentorship

  • 2025

    Industry Mentor, Penn × Anthropic Sprint Hackathon

    University of Pennsylvania (220+ participants, 130+ teams)

  • 2025

    Judge, Vibe Space @ SF Tech Week

    San Francisco · judging alongside engineers from Google, Amazon, Adobe, IBM, and others

  • 2025

    Mentor, Opportunity Hack / ASU Fall Hackathon

    Tempe, AZ

  • 2025

    Jury Member, ANTSPARK Pre-Incubation Program

    Istanbul Kültür University

  • 2016–17

    Referee, TÜBİTAK Robotics Competition

    Turkey · evaluated autonomous robotics teams on design, control systems, and safety

Advisory & Boards

  • 2025–

    Advisory Board Member (External Stakeholder)

    Beykent University, Faculty of Economics

  • 2025–

    Alumni Mentor

    Ambition In Motion

Memberships

  • IEEE Senior Member

    Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

  • IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, Senior Member

    IEEE CIS

  • AAAI Member

    Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence

  • Alpha Chi National College Honor Society

    Top 10% graduate students (academic excellence)

  • Google Developers Group

    Seattle & Bellevue chapters

  • International Space University

    Alumni Network

Honors

  • 2025

    Global Recognition Award, Real Estate Technology

    Awarded to Vardenus

  • Second Place, CARDIN HeadHunter Hackathon

  • 2020

    National Winner, InovaTIM AI & Robotics High-School Program

    Recognized by KOSGEB and the Turkish Exporters Assembly (TIM); represented Turkey at the European Entrepreneurship Promotion Awards (EEPA 2020)

  • 2020–

    NASA Space Apps Challenge, Local Lead & Mentor

    Organized local editions across multiple cycles (Istanbul)

  • 2019

    Best Space Project, Maker Faire San Francisco

    Exhibited space and robotics project

  • 2015

    Second Place, CanSat Competition (AAS / NASA / JPL)

    Team leader · led the Preliminary Design Review, Critical Design Review, and Post-Flight Review · Istanbul Aydın University