Invitation to Join the Graduate Studies in Environmental Engineering at Marmara University

Dear science and engineering students,

I invite you to apply for admission to our master's or doctorate program in environmental engineering. I would like to take this opportunity to give you some important information that can help you in your decision:

We have a relatively young and very active faculty, with expertise in many diverse areas of environmental engineering such as water treatment, wastewater treatment, air pollution modeling, air pollution control engineering, solid and hazardous waste management, sludge treatment, filtration, fluidization, hydraulics, and mathematical modeling. Please see our web pages for detailed information about our department. I strongly recommend that you review the pages giving information about faculty members and their research interests. 

If you join our graduate program, you will have several options that you may pursue for later stages of your career:There are separate pages giving lists of international publications by the members of our department, completed and ongoing research projects, and completed undergraduate graduation projects. Research carried out by some of our department members lead to changes in certain basic textbooks in environmental engineering. We are proud to say that the undergraduate graduation projects (completed as a required part of the courses ENVE 497 and 498) in our department are at a scientific level equivalent to master’s studies at many other universities.

1. If you plan to work for a PhD degree with a subsequent academic career, our graduate program in Environmental Engineering is certainly  a correct choice for you. Our faculty members and graduate students are actively involved in research and publish amply in international refereed journals. As a department policy, it is required for each PhD student to publish at least one paper in a journal   listed in Thomson Reuters SCI-E. This is important, because your thesis advisor is responsible for teaching you how to get published and, if you plan an academic career, getting published is definitely necessary.
2. If you plan to get an MS degree from us and then to pursue a PhD degree abroad, or perhaps to complete your PhD work with us and then to pursue post-doctoral studies abroad, again our graduate program is a very correct choice for you. Here are some reasons for this: (1) Most of our department members were educated (in a PhD program or with post-doctoral studies) abroad and esentially all of them have connections at universities abroad. They can help and guide you to get acceptance from well-known universities in other countries. (2) Our program is in English and this will help you to easily adapt to studies abroad. (3) You will acquire very important research skills and get a very good graduate education in our department. This will go a long way in helping you achieve your goals.
3. If you plan to get a graduate degree with a subsequent career in the industry and particularly if you are interested in water and wastewater treatment industries, our graduate program in Environmental Engineering is the correct choice for you in this country. I say this with great confidence because of several reasons. Many of our department members have actual design experience, do a lot of consulting, and are experts in water and wastewater treatment technologies. The founder and the first chairman of our department, Professor Ahmet Mete Saatçı is an internationally recognized expert in this field and a pioneer in the education of environmental engineering students in the area of water and wastewater treatment. He teaches two undergraduate design courses and shares his knowledge and experience with all of his students. We encourage our graduate students coming from other universities to also take these courses from Professor Saatçı. Many companies in the water and wastewater treatment industry have contacted us asking for the names of and eager to employ our graduates “who had taken design courses from Professor Saatçı.” Professor Saatçı also occasionally teaches a graduate level course on advanced wastewater treatment. The classes are frequently conducted at treatment plants, allowing the students to participate in actual consulting work. Department of Environmental Engineering at Marmara University is the only place you can get this kind of practical engineering training together with advanced theoretical treatment of the subject matter.

Here are some more points you should consider:

We invite researchers from universities in Turkey and from abroad to make presentations on their research work. We also organize long talks (“lectures”) by engineers in the industry to share their knowledge and experience with our students. All of these activities, in addition to increasing the knowledge and stretching the horizons of our students (all of whom are invited to these activities), give them the opportunity to meet with people from the industry and from other universities.

Our graduate level classes are organized to be very small, conducted typically with at most  5 to 8 students. This gives the instructor and the students the opportunity to interact very closely, maximizing the time the instructors can spend with each student.

Our graduate students are free to work with any one of the faculty members, free to choose their research area.

I can add many other points to what I have written above; but I will ask you to contact us (either directly with Professor Ömer Akgiray, or one of his assistant department heads, Esra Erdim) for more information. Please do not hesitate to contact us. It would even be better if you come and visit us at Göztepe!

My best wishes

 

Prof. Dr. Ömer Akgiray