I’m currently working as a product manager at Facebook, obsessing over good products, reading sci-fi, writing for pleasure, making music and discovering new spots in the Bay.
I graduated from Yale with distinction in Computer Science. At Yale, I was a project lead in the entrepreneurship center, worked on a fashion/e-commerce app, engineered virtual reality worlds, performed in multiple concerts, made lifelong friends and laughed a lot.
I was awarded the Michele Dufault Endowment Fund Scholarship for Yale Women in Science for my studies in computer science and the Dixon/Waite Scholarship from the School of Music for piano. I’m also a Neo Scholar.
I love books 📚.
I interned at Facebook twice. First, I met Mike Schrep and presented my augmented reality intern project. Second, my team won the global hackathon. Our project is now launched and available internally for dogfooding.
I was born and raised in Istanbul. I went to Galatasaray High School, the most competitive high school in Turkey, and graduated as valedictorian. My graduation speech caught public attention and was published among famous thought leaders of Turkey in The Window to the West.
I worked on a portable charging device that won the First Step to Nobel Prize in Physics. I was also a researcher at MIT RSI that selects only a handful of international students.
I [hear](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_pitch#:~:text=Absolute pitch (AP)%2C often,benefit of a reference tone.&text=For example%2C an AP possessor,hunting" for the correct pitch.) sounds as musical notes. I know what it’s like to be an octopus because I had eight hands before. I could read notes before I could read words.
I graduated from my first conservatory at 10 and from the second at 15. I founded a piano quartet, organized and played in concerts to promote social change across Turkey. We’ve enabled women in Eastern Turkey to go to school, contributed to children’s healthcare and aimed to unite diverse ethnic groups through music.
This birthday card made by my dear friend Omer Prives captures me very well. 😄
Here is some news coverage about me.