I run through walls, make things happen, and tell good stories along the way :)
- Currently a researcher at Amazon, previously Adept
- Obsessed on AI at Carnegie Mellon, did research under the MultiComp Lab (multimodal ML)
- Previously started two startups, introduced 1000+ students into programming as head TA 👨🏫, and even built AI models for Mercedes Formula 1 Team 🏎️
- Current Neo Scholar, previously an Innovation Scholar at Swartz Center
shot on a disposable film camera :) — March, 2025
Experiences
- Post training & RL for agents.
Introducing Amazon Nova Act | Amazon AGI Labs
- Built AI-Native search and merchandising tools for fashion e-commerce companies, allowing users to search products from IG posts, screenshots, our their natural language
- Learned how to talk to customers just as much as I did how to train/deploy AI models. Backed by Unusual Ventures’ Academy program. Winners of Berkeley’s AI Demo Day in 2023 (AIEB).
- Developed the GeSTICS dataset, a multimodal corpus designed to enhance the generation of realistic nonverbal behaviors in virtual agents and human-robot interaction systems
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GeSTICS: A Multimodal Corpus for Studying Gesture Synthesis in Two-party Interactions with Contextualized Speech
- Trained AI models to detect electric deployment (MGU-K) of F1 cars
- Designed AutoML pipeline to enable our non-AI engineers to train their own models in a single function call, letting them experiment with sequence models at scale.
- Spent 5 semesters trying to find the most simple & elegant way to explain concepts, in hopes of igniting a passion for programming in the hundreds of students I’ve taught.
- Envisioned an experimental version of the course based on active learning, tripled student size & set a new teaching standard in three semesters
- Directed a team of 16 TAs, taught lectures, and created recitation plans and practice problems to elevate the academic experience for 1000+ students over five semesters
Projects
🪢 LongRoPE (8x context w/o FT)
Implementing LongRoPE paper to expand LLMs context window 8x without fine-tuning and up to 64x with only 1000 training steps.
(ML Engineering, PyTorch)
AI Mathematics Olympiad
Teaching LLMs how to reason over mathematics. Fine-tuning, advanced RAG, and code-execution over open-source models.
(ML Engineering, PyTorch)
🛍️ ShopMyStyle.ai (co-founder)
Developing AI-based tools to help customers search for more personalized products, faster.
Links: website | YC W23 Pitch
(AI Infra, PyTorch, Full Stack)
🫐 Blueberry AI (CalHacks’23)
AI secretary that makes phone calls and resolves issues on your behalf, saving hours lost waiting in queue for customer service.
Links: video demo | devpost | codebase
(OpenAI, LlamaIndex, Web Dev)
💻 Kahoot112
Merged Kahoot’s thrill of competition and Leetcode’s challenge, crafting a competitive programming game.
Links: video demo (see babyface Deniz)
(Python)
🥬 Autonomous Greenhouse
Grew enough lettuce and radishes for a salad (an actually tasty one)! Our greenhouse relied on a layered autonomy model for planning and CV/ML for state estimation.
(Robotics, CV, Autonomy)
🧠 Rewriting Meta’s ImageBind Model to be JSON-Serializable
Revised Meta's ImageBind model for online hosting, enabling it to accept JSON-serializable inputs for remote access.
Links: github repo | example deployment
(AI Infra, PyTorch, Baseten)
⛓️ Blockchain for Supply Chain
Was a member of Palo Alto Research Center's (PARC) Blockchain group. Researched how blockchain technology could be used to improve supply chains.
🍭 Ludens Store (co-founder)
An e-commerce company we built in high school. Sold personalized gift boxes filled with sweets. It was small but gave us a taste of how marketing, website design, and customer service worked.
Initiatives that matter.
🇹🇷 Board Member, Turkish Student Society (Carnegie Mellon)
(Earthquake Relief) Raised $125K to help victims and build container houses after the aftermath of the 2023 Turkey-Syria Earthquake (press coverage).
(Election Participation) Organized busses to Washington DC to make sure Turkish nationals living in Pittsburgh could cast a vote in the 2023 Turkish Presidential elections.
📚 Volunteer, Young Guru Academy (YGA)
YGA is a non-profit in Turkey working on the SDGs. I was selected among 50,000 annual applicants with 50 other students to participate in YGA's Social Innovation Leadership Program.
(Education Equality) Traveled to orphanages in several underdeveloped cities to play with the kids, incite interest in STEM, and deliver science robotics kits free of charge to improve classroom resources.
(Accessibility) Designed technologies to assist individuals with visual impairment, which evolved into Turkcell’s Dream Companion application with 200k+ active users.
