In response to the growing number of students, the CS department is still in the process of expanding its academic staff. From 1 September, the research group on Design and Analysis of Communication Systems
(DACS) has been enriched by a new assistant professor, Suzan Bayhan.
Here's what Suzan has to say about herself:
I am a computer scientist working on a variety of resource allocation problems to make the communications networks more performant. This might correspond to, to give an example, for an ordinary user watching Netflix without any stalls or for a network operator utilizing its expensive resources more efficiently and serving its users better. I earned my PhD degree in Computer Engineering in 2012 from Bogazici University (in my hometown Istanbul). The key focus of my PhD thesis was resource allocation algorithms for wireless communication devices, so-called cognitive radios, to facilitate more efficient use of the radio spectrum, which is a very precious resource managed very strictly.
Briefly, cognitive radios can use the unused spectrum reserved for certain technologies that would otherwise be wasted since spectrum cannot be saved for future use. Using spectrum efficiently is still an issue; in fact, it has become even more essential with increasing density of wireless devices and the increase in video-centric applications. Therefore, I plan to continue my research also in this direction.
Coming back to my academic path: right after my PhD, I joined the University of Helsinki as a post-doc and worked at the Collaborative Networking (CoNe) research group for four years before joining TKN at TU Berlin as a senior researcher. Since 2017, I was a Docent at the University of Helsinki. After three years at TU Berlin, I am now a member of Design and Analysis of Communication Systems (DACS) and looking forward to new responsibilities and collaborations here at the University of Twente. Lastly, it would be incomplete if I do not mention that I am a member of Networking Networking Women (N2Women), which is a community of female researchers working in the networking domain. Since 2006, N2women has been promoting a more inclusive community by supporting particularly female researchers. I am happy to co-chair this year's N2Women Workshop co-located with ACM Sensys 2019.
Since my graduate studies, I have been teaching different subjects in different capacities. I find teaching very exciting and important for several reasons. First, to me, it is an act of sharing the beauty of science and engineering via making the mysterious or hard to understand topics more accessible. This is really important to me as I believe access to information and knowledge helps mitigating the inequalities and empowers people. Moreover, teaching gives me an opportunity to motivate students to be critical thinkers and active questioners.
Second, it is a part of science communication. As researchers, our audience is not only experts working in the same domain but also the next generation who will be contributing to science and technology. Last but not the least, teaching is fun, especially when students engage themselves with the discussion and share their perspective. In my class, I put utmost importance to encourage everyone to express their opinion or ask questions, both to make the class more vivid and because I believe comprehensive understanding comes with questions. I am especially delighted when those students who are a bit hesitant about participating in the first classes become very enthusiastic participants later on.
