Fatih Ömer Ilday - Curriculum Vitae#

• Ph.D., Applied Physics, Cornell University,  USA, 2004
  
• B.S., Theoretical Physics, Boğaziçi University, Turkey, 1998

• 2023/6 to present, Professor, Ruhr Universität Bochum (Germany)
  
• 2006/1 to 2023/8, Professor, Department of Physics (primary appointment), Department of Electrical Engineering (since 2014), UNAM (since 2015) at Bilkent University (Turkey)
  
• 2017/3 to 2017/6, Visiting Professor (sabbatical), Department of Complex Systems, Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel)
  
• 2017/1 to 2017/3, Visiting Professor (sabbatical), Department of Physics, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology (Israel)
  
• 2005/1 to 2005/12, Research Scientist, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA)
  
• 2003/10 to 2004/12, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA)
  
• 1999/6 to 2003/10, Research Assistant, Department of Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University
  
• 1998/8 to 1999/6, Teaching Assistant, Department of Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University
  

• Approximately 100 citations per paper for 87 journal articles with >8500 total citations (Google Scholar) and h-index of 43
  
• Total of approximately 100 invited talks at conferences, workshops
  
• Total of approximately 100 seminars or colloquia at universities and research centers
  
• Total of >300 presentations at conferences, schools, and workshops

• 2023 Awarded Alexander von Humboldt (AvH) Professorship by the Humboldt Foundation
  
• 2023 Offered tenured (AvH) professorship by Ruhr Universität Bochum, Germany, accepted
  
• 2022 Offered tenured professorship by Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany, declined
  
• 2022 Offered tenured professorship (process by presidential invitation) at Aalto University, Espoo, Finland, declined
  
• 2022 European Research Council (ERC), Advanced Grant
  
• 2021 European Research Council (ERC), Proof of Concept Grant
  
• 2021 Elected as a board member of the Science Academy of Turkey
  
• 2021 Elected as a member of Academia Europaea
  
• 2017 The Science Award, TÜBİTAK (Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) (the youngest person to receive the highest award for science in Turkey, given to physics, on average, every three years)
  
• 2017 Offered tenured professorship at UC Boulder, USA, declined
  
• 2017 Senior Member, Optical Society of America (OSA)
  
• 2016 Full Member, Science Academy of Turkey
  
• 2014 European Research Council (ERC), Consolidator Grant
  
• 2012 Engin Arık Science Award, Turkish Physical Society (the youngest recipient of the top scientific prize of the society)
  
• 2011 Teşvik (Young Scientist) Award, TÜBİTAK
  
• 2006 Outstanding Young Scientist Award, Turkish Academy of Sciences
  
• 2006 Marie Curie International Reintegration Grant, European Commission
  
• 2003 William Nichols Findley Award, Cornell University
  
• 2003 Research Laboratory of Electronics Fellowship, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  
• 1998 Valedictorian, Department of Physics, Boğaziçi University

• Taught 22 different courses (each course is 3 hours/week and runs for 14 weeks) for a total of 68 times
  
• Developed 9 new courses at Bilkent University
  
• Regularly rated a top instructor in the evaluations, which the students anonymously fill for every course
  
• Designed the first physics courses at Bilkent University that implemented the research-oriented active learning initiative, whereby students propose their own projects and carry them out throughout the semester in a process that aims to imitate the main steps of a PhD thesis with the instructor acting akin to a thesis advisor
  
• Focussed on teaching graduate courses all about self-organized phenomena in the past five years, (i) Statistical Physics, (ii) Complex dynamic adaptive systems, (iii) Ultrafast Lasers and Nonlinear Optics, and (iv) Self-organized and Self-assembled Systems from Nanoscience to Biotechnology
  
• Initiated the Physics Colloquia, to which world-renown scientists are invited to give talks accessible to undergraduates. Our students heavily attend the colloquia and interact with the lecturer; in fact, a number of them have eventually done an internship or Ph.D. with the scientists they have met through the colloquia.
  

• Supervised 9 PhD and 12 MS theses. All of my PhD students moved to highly coveted industrial (4 of them) or postdoctoral positions (5 of them) in Europe and North America in fields directly related to their theses. Three of them eventually founded companies related to ultrafast lasers (2 in Turkey, 1 in Canada, all 3 are successful and continue to operate).-
  
• Supervised 7 postdoctoral fellows: Five moved to faculty positions at Bilkent, Bogaziçi/Bosphorus Universities, and METU (three top universities in Turkey), Nanjing University (a top university in China), and Tomsk Polytechnic University (Russia). The 6th was visiting from Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (India), who returned to his home institution. The 7th joined the company Lumos Laser founded by my former PhD student. -
  
• Provided and continue to provide research opportunities to more than 30 undergraduate students, almost all of whom proceeded to pursue PhDs at top universities in the USA and Europe. I am currently supervising 1 postdoc, 1 PhD student, 4 MS students, and 5 undergraduate students whose research is supported by a research engineer and an administrative assistant.