At euRobotics, we’ve been pleased to see the growth in interest from new organisations keen to become a member of our association. Several new members have joined recently. So, from this month, we are launching a new regular newsletter feature to introduce them to our wider community. In future editions we will also shine the spotlight on some of our existing members. This month we introduce one of our newest members – Istanbul Medipol University.
Istanbul Medipol University is a non-profit private university founded in 2009. The university has a powerful institutional culture, entrepreneurialism and dynamism of continuous development. The university contains 13 Faculties, including medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, health sciences, engineering and natural sciences. The university also contains four
Graduate Schools with 55 Masters and 29 PhD programs, 58 undergraduate programs with more than 30,000 students.
Departments of Biomedical Engineering, Electrical and Electronics Engineering, and Computer Engineering perform robotics related R&D activities. PhD programs offer funded thesis projects directly related to robotics. The faculty is research-oriented; the Neuroprosthetics Research Laboratory, Living Robotics Research Laboratory, and Computational Vision and AI Research Laboratory conduct research aimed at the development of new robotic systems or use robots for other scientific topics.
The Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences includes three mainly robotics-related research laboratories whose activities are funded mostly by national agencies such as the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey – TUBITAK). The Neuroprosthetics Research Laboratory’s (nrg.medipol.edu.tr) studies are mainly focused on invasive brain-machine interfaces which employ bio-inspired robotic control and neural decoding algorithms for realizing the interaction of neurons with robotic systems. Titles of main funded research projects are: ‘Design of a biomimetic and wireless motor neuroprosthesis’; ‘Investigation of the striatal dopamine concentration modulations during motor and neuroprosthetic skill learning’, and ‘Design of a chronically implantable microelectrode array for measurement of dopamine concentration’.
The Living Robotics Research Laboratory focuses on the design, control, implementation and evaluation of biomechatronic systems that aim to enhance human abilities. Computational Vision and Artificial Intelligence Research Laboratory focuses on methods for computer vision and image processing applications, autonomous drones and vehicles, and applications of machine/deep learning.
Main recent projects of the laboratory supported by TUBITAK are ‘Smart camera system for wide area surveillance’ and ‘Model-free solution of inverse problems in image/video processing using deep learning’.
Istanbul Medipol University seeks powerful research collaborations with Europe. Medipol is very open and enthusiastic for multi-disciplinary research; in particular, the university has a powerful and comprehensive School of Medicine and School of Engineering and Natural Sciences. These two faculties collaborate in many projects. This multi-disciplinary approach provides advantages to our Living Robotics Research Laboratory to carry out qualified research and contribute graduate students’ studies.
Medipol aims to expand its network by becoming a member of euRobotics, to create quality research projects and to carry out events together, thus contributing to research both Europe and Turkey in the field of robotics. Additionally, it aims to strengthen the interaction and cooperation between institutions and countries by coming together with many different researchers in Europe, and to expand mutual recognition.
More information at:
Istanbul Medipol University Official website: https://www.medipol.edu.tr/
IMU School of Engineering and Natural Sciences: https://sens.medipol.edu.tr/
IMU-SABITA: https://sabita.medipol.edu.tr/
Neuroprosthetics Research Group: https://nrg.medipol.edu.tr/