Yusuf Leblebici received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering from Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey, in 1984 and 1986, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), IL, USA, in 1990. Between 1991 and 2000, he worked as a faculty member at UIUC, at Istanbul Technical University, and at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) where he established and directed the VLSI Design Laboratory. From 1999 to 2002, he also served as the Microelectronics Program Coordinator at Sabancı University.

In 2002, Yusuf Leblebici became a Chair Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and Director of the Microelectronic Systems Laboratory. In November 2018, he was appointed as President of Sabanci University. His research interests include design of high-speed CMOS digital and mixed-signal integrated circuits, computer-aided design of VLSI systems, intelligent sensor interfaces, modeling and simulation of semiconductor devices, and VLSI reliability analysis. He is the coauthor of seven books (including two internationally acclaimed textbooks), as well as more than 250 articles published in various journals and conferences.

Yusuf Leblebici has been the recipient of the prestigious Young Scientist Award of the Turkish Scientific and Technological Research Council in 1995, and the "Joseph S. Satin Distinguished Fellow Award" in 1999. He was elected as an IEEE Fellow in 2009, and as a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society for 2010–2011.

Prof. Dr. Cem Güneri is the Vice President for Education at Sabancı University. He has been a faculty member at the Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences of Sabancı University since 2001. Together with the founding faculty members of the University, he has been actively involved in developing undergraduate courses, minor and graduate programs in mathematics. He has served as the Mathematics Program Coordinator, member of the Foundations Development Program Advisory Board and the University Education Committee, in addition to various other administrative responsibilities. He was the Vice Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences between 2012 and 2018, during which he took responsibilities related to educational affairs of the Faculty, including accreditation of the Faculty Programs. He has been selected for Sabancı University’s annual teaching awards for the First Year Courses and the Graduating Class several times.

Cem Güneri received his BSc degree from the Middle East Technical University and PhD degree from Louisiana State University, both in Mathematics. His research areas can be summarized as finite fields and curves defined over them, algebraic coding theory and certain cryptographic applications. As part of the research group at Sabancı University on these areas, and together with various national and international partners, he carried out active research and graduated 5 PhD and 7 MSc students.

He was an Executive Board member of the Turkish Mathematical Society between 2010 and 2018. He is a member of Turkish Mathematical Society, American Mathematical Society and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

Professor Dr. Mehmet Yıldız is the Vice President for Research and Development at Sabancı University. Born in Diyarbakır in 1972, and received his primary, secondary and high school education in Ereğli/Zonguldak, Turkey, he completed his undergraduate education in 1996 with the first rank in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering Department at Yıldız Technical University and received his MSc. degree also from Metallurgical and Materials Engineering department at Istanbul Technical University in 2000. Between 1996-2000, he worked in two different companies as an R&D engineer and a project manager in the fields of welding and non-destructive testing. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in 2005 from Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Victoria, BC, Canada in the fields of computational fluid dynamics and semiconductor single crystal growth and then worked as a research associate and lecturer in the same department until 2007.

In 2007, he joined Sabancı University, Faculty of Engineering Natural Sciences as a faculty member in Materials Science and Engineering Program and since 2013, has been leading the effort of establishing Sabancı University-Integrated Manufacturing Technologies Research and Application Center and its industrial leg, Composite Technologies Center of Excellence with Kordsa. Currently, he is serving as the founding director of these centers, and a deputy Chairperson in the board of directors of Kordsa Company. He sits in the R&D advisory board of Kastamonu Entegre. He contributed to the establishment of Manufacturing Engineering graduate program at Sabancı University.

Dr. Yıldız's areas of expertise include advanced composite materials, nanocomposites, structural health monitoring and computational mechanics. He published more than 85 SCI indexed high impact factor journals, 8 book chapters, prepared and presented over 135 conference papers and graduated more than 28 MSc. and Ph.D. students.

Prof. Dr. Fuat Keyman is the Vice President for Institutional Affairs and Social Impact and Director of the Istanbul Policy Center. Keyman is a leading political scientist in Turkey and an expert on globalization, democratization, international relations, Turkey – EU relations, Turkish foreign policy, and civil society development. He is a member of the Turkish Science Academy. In 2013, he was awarded the Strategic Vision Award for Scientists by TASAM (Turkish Asian Center for Strategic Studies). He has worked as a member on the Council of Wise People as part of the Peace Process to the Kurdish issue. He also serves on advisory and editorial boards for a number of respected international and national organizations as well as for academic journals. He has been the research director for various projects, such as Peter Berger and Samuel Huntington’s Many Globalizations; Strengthening Checks and Balances in Turkey, SIDA, Sweden; Enacting European Citizenship, European Council Framework 7 Project; Mapping Civil Society in Turkey, CIVICUS; and received a prestigious grant on urbanization from the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey. Since 2002, as well as his academic work, Keyman has been sharing his ideas and analysis of Turkey in a global context through various newspaper columns and TV programs.

He is the author and editor of more nearly thirty books, including Istanbul: Living with Difference in a Global City (with Nora Fisher-Onar and Susan C. Pearce, 2018), Turkey, The Arab Spring and Beyond (with Bülent Aras, 2016), Global Turkey in Europe 3: Democracy, Trade, and the Kurdish Question in Turkey-EU Relations (2015), Democracy, Identity and Foreign Policy in Turkey (with Şebnem Gümüşçü, 2014); Global Turkey in Europe 2: Energy, Migration, Civil Society and Citizenship Issues in Turkey-EU Relations (2014); Global Turkey in Europe: Political, Economic, and Foreign Policy Dimensions of Turkey’s Evolving Relationship with the EU (2013); Remaking Turkey (in Turkish, 2013); Symbiotic Antagonisms: Competing Nationalisms in Turkey (with Ayşe Kadıoğlu, 2011); Cities: The Transformation of Anatolia, the Future of Turkey (2010); Competing Nationalism in Turkey (2010), Turkey in a Globalizing World (2010); Remaking Turkey, Globalization, Alternative Modernities and Democracy (2008); Turkish Politics in a Changing World (with Ziya Öniş, 2007), Citizenship in a Global World: European Questions and Turkish Experiences (2005); Changing World, Transforming Turkey (2005); Globalization, State, Identity/Difference: Toward a Critical Social Theory of International Relations (1997). Keyman has also authored numerous articles published in prestigious, peer-reviewed international journals such as Journal of Democracy, Third World Quarterly, European Journal of Social Theory, Theory Culture & Society, and Review of International Political Economy, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies.

Prior to joining Sabancı University, Keyman taught in the Department of International Relations at Koç University between 2002 and 2010, and in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at Bilkent University between 1994 and 2002. He was also Visiting Professor at Carleton University in the summer of 1997. Keyman holds several post-doctoral fellowships from Wellesley College and Harvard University He received his PhD in Political Science with a concentration in International Relations and Comparative Politics from Carleton University. He completed his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey.

Erkay Savaş received the BS (1990) and MS (1994) degrees in electrical engineering from the Electronics and Communications Engineering Department at Istanbul Technical University. He completed the PhD degree in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Oregon State University in June 2000. He had worked for various companies and research institutions before he joined Sabanci University in 2002. His research interests include applied cryptography, data and communication security, privacy in biometrics, security and privacy in data mining applications, embedded systems security, and distributed systems. He is a member of IEEE, ACM, the IEEE Computer Society, and the International Association of Cryptologic Research (IACR).

Meltem Müftüler-Baç is a Professor of International Relations and Jean Monnet chair ad personam at Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey. She received her B.A in Political Science from Boğazici University in 1988, MA and Ph.D. in Political Science and International Relations from Temple University, USA in 1989 and 1992, respectively. She became assistant professor in 1992, associate professor in 1996 and professor in 2005. Before joining Sabancı University in February 2002, she taught at Bilkent University from 1992 to February 2002 as Assistant and Associate Professor, where she was also the Vice Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences at Bilkent University between 2000 and 2002. She worked previously at Temple University (USA), Bilkent University (Turkey), and was a Visiting professor at the University of Chicago, and an Affiliate Professor at University of Stockholm (2013-2016), a Visiting Scholar and Affiliate Faculty at the Perry World House, University of Pennsylvania (2019-2020). At Sabanci University, Professor Müftüler-Baç coordinated the Social and Political Studies undergraduate program from 2002 to 2011, established the masters program in European Studies and coordinated it from 2004 to 2014, and established and coordinated the BA program in International Studies from 2011 to 2014. Prof. Müftüler-Baç has authored multiple academic books, Turkey's Relations with a Changing Europe published by the Manchester University Press in 1997, Divergent Pathways: Turkey and the European Union published by Barbara Budrich in 2016, and co-edited Turkey and the European Union Relations: Dilemmas, Opportunities and Constraints, with Yannis Stivachtis, Lexington books in 2008, and Parliamentary Cooperation and Diplomacy in EU External Relations with Jan Wouters and Kolja Raube, in 2019. Her publications appeared in Journal of European Public Policy, Middle Eastern Studies, East European Qaurterly, Journal of European Integration, South East European Politics and Society, Security Dialogue, International Studies Perspectives, Turkish Studies, Women’s Studies International Forum, West European Politics, International Journal, Journal of Democracy, Journal of Language and Politics, Asia-Europe Journal, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, European Journal of Women’s Studies, East European Politics. Her work has been supported by the EU’s research programs consistently. She participated in the F6 project ‘Reconstituting Democracy in Europe’ from 2006 to 2012, FP7 project ‘TRANSWORLD’ for 2012-2015, and FP7 project ‘MAXCAP’ for 2013-2016. She is participating currently in two H2020 projects; InDivEU-Integrating Diversity in the EU 2019-2022, and MAGYC- Migration and Asylum Governance 2018-2022. In 2011, she received a grant for a Jean Monnet Center of Excellence from the European Commission. Her work is widely cited in Turkey-European Union relations, on EU enlargement, Turkish foreign policy and Turkish politics. Prof. Müftüler-Baç holds two prestigious awards from the Turkish Academy of Sciences: Young Social Scientist Investigator Award in 2002 and Distinguished Young Scientist Award in 2003. She was awarded with the Jean Monnet Professor ad personam title from the European Commission in 2004. Her research and academic outputs could be reached at her website: http://myweb.sabanciuniv.edu/muftuler, ResearchGate and her Google Scholar page.

Nihat Kasap holds a Ph.D. in Business with MIS major from University of Florida and B.S. and M.S. degrees from Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey and University of Florida respectively. He has joined Sabancı University, School of Management in 2004 as an Assistant Professor. He became an Associate Professor in 2012 and a full Professor in 2017. His research focuses on pricing and QoS issues in telecommunication networks, mobile technologies in E-government services, heuristic design and optimization, Social Media Analytics and Data Mining. His works have appeared in Operations Research Letters, Decision Support Systems, International Journal of Forecasting, Decision Sciences, International Journal of Systems Science, Annals of OR, Expert Systems with Applications and in the Proceedings of numerous international and national conferences. The research projects that he joint have been awarded funding from the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) and Ministry of Industry and Commerce.