O. Burak Ozdoganlar (PhD '99) has been appointed as an assistant professor on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University Department of Mechanical Engineering effective January 2004. His area of concentration is micro/meso-scale manufacturing and modeling, simulation and experimentation of MEMS/microsystems.
Ozdoganlar came to Michigan for the best of reasons: "It was academically more competitive than Ohio State University, where I got my MS degree. I could have stayed there for PhD, but decided to come to Michigan. GO BLUE!"
He proved that he was up to the competition by being named "student of the year" award from the Engineering Research Center, where he was the president of the Student Leadership Council of ERC. He also received a first year departmental fellowship.
His teaching responsibilities at Carnegie Mellon will include the senior-level "Advanced Manufacturing" course and the junior-level "Dynamic Systems and Control." While at ME, he was a teaching assistant for two semesters of ME305, "Introduction to Finite Element Methods" and lectured in ME585, "Machining Dynamics and Mechanics," ME482, "Advanced Statics of Machining Processes," and ME360, "Modeling and Control of Dynamic Systems."
Ozdoganlar credits his initial experiences at ME with inspiring him to pursue a concentration in manufacturing. "During my first year, with the departmental fellowship," he said, "I had a good opportunity to work closely with a couple of faculty. Based on the relationships I built and the available funding, I chose the manufacturing area."
He also credits several of the faculty for their assistance, including his advisor, Professor William Endres, adding that Professor Yoram Koren was really supportive. "My financial support, other than the first year when I had a departmental fellowship, came from ERC/RMS," said Ozdoganlar. "Another person who helped me significantly initially was Associate Professor Arthur Kuo, as was Professor Noel Perkins, who offered me his assistance whenever I needed it, and Prof. Jun Ni who participated in my dissertation committee."
Deciding to join the faculty at Carnegie Mellon was a fairly easy decision. "Carnegie Mellon University is a great place to work, one of the top research universities in the country. And it's in a really nice location. Really! Pittsburgh is one of the best-kept secrets."
In addition to his doctorate, Ozdoganlar also holds a BS from Istanbul Technical University, Turkey, and two MS degrees from Ohio State University. He also completed post-doctoral work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was also a senior member of the technical staff at Sandia National Labs in Albuquerque, New Mexico.