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Last Updated on 29/10/2007
Hi. You're visiting my virtual presence area, and in it you will find more about a legitimate engineering student. This page is focused on my academic attraction, my hobbies and partly my business life.
Best regards.
- Furkan Kıraç
Personal Information
Hobbies :
| Sports (in order of preference): |
Kiteboarding (Level 3 and learning...),
windsurfing (Advanced and learning...),
Playing football (at least once a week; I have been playing continously for 5 years now),
table tennis (2007 Computer Engineering table tennis tournament champion),
fitness (doing regularly for gathering endurance),
volleyball (playing once or twice per month),
basketball (playing once or twice per month),
tennis (playing seldom)
Watching football at Fenerbahçe Stadium
(Look: Alt Maraton, midfield line splits me into half:)
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| Games: |
Backgammon, Dune II (unforgettable one, hi there Alihan ;), Civilization (all versions), Counter Strike
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| Travelling (especially Europe): |
Izmir, Çeşme, Alaçatı, Fethiye, London, Amsterdam, Kiev, Paris, Brussels, Moscow, Prag, Kosice, ...
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Foreign Music :
Especialy progressive and symphonic rock + jazz |
My Top 12(!) as of June 2007:
- Nightwish (All Albums: This group is incredible in all aspects! Pity that they lost precious Tarja Turunen)
- Joe Satriani (All Albums: Incredible talent)
- Bruce Dickenson (Chemical Wedding, Accident of Birth: Stylish Vocals)
- Iron Maiden (All Albums: Rich Guitars)
- Eric Johnson (All Albums: Unbelievably Precise)
- Unshine (Earth Magick: Unearthly Catchy Vocals)
- Anggun (All Albums: Pop and Rock fusion)
- Sade (All Albums: Perfect interpretation + perfect voice + jazz)
- Pink Floyd (All Albums: Gods of progressive music)
- Deep Purple (All Albums: How can I forget?)
- Led Zeppelin (All Albums: How can I forget?)
- Rainbow (All Albums: Long live Ritchie...)
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| Turkish Pop Music : |
Listening to Teoman, Sertab Erener, Fergan Mirkelam, Nil Karaibrahimgil, Hande Yener, Kenan Doğulu, Funda Arar, Kıraç (namesake;)
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| Dancing : |
Boğaziçi University Dance Club.
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| Currently learning (September 2007): |
Kiteboarding (Kilyos, Alaçatı),
windsurfing (Alaçatı),
what do women want? (in the beginning of a life-long journey...)
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| And of course: |
Wandering around in Bagdat Street and Sahil Yolu for hours...
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(October 2007, Paris)
(October 2007, Paris)
(October 2007, Paris)
(December 2005, Amsterdam)
(October 2006, Kiev)
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Kiteboarding (June 2007, Alaçatı)
Academic Interests:
(that constructively proves that I am also a nerd besides everything!)
| Languages I am trying to forget: |
Cobol, Clipper, Fortran, Basic, Pascal (yeah I am a hardcore C++ fan :), German ;) |
| Academic Attraction: |
Computer Vision, Pattern Recognition, Artifical Intelligence, Neural Networks, Wavelets, Seabeds (hehe), Genetic Algorithms, Scheduling, Cognition, Computer Graphics, ... |
Core Programming Languages
(that I am expert on): |
Machine Code of 680x0/80x86/ARM/PLC, C/C++/C#, Java, Perl, ... , |
Database Applications
(that I am expert on): |
Oracle, MSSQL, Interbase, Firebird, PostgreSQL, Informix, MySQL, ... |
| Assistant & Academic Languages: |
MATLAB, Mathematica, Maple, Latex, ... |
| Operating Systems: |
Windows, Linux, AmigaOS, OS/2, QNX, PocketPC, Symbian, Cisco Routers, ... |
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A Mechanical Poem !
Well, I am a Mechanical Engineer for real.
There should be a gear somewhere near!
Lord hear us that we fear:
We are in lack of women here!
- Furkan
Bogazici University Mechanical Engineering Department,
First 2 verses are written in 1996,
Last 2 were added in a thermodynamics lesson in 1998, credits go to Taner Derbentli...
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(August 1998, Bodrum)
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(May 2007, İzmir)
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Achievements:
| 1989 | Winning high school entrance exams both for college and lycee, and entering KAL with the top rank. |
| 1994 | 3rd degree in TÜBİTAK II. National Science Competition of Turkey on Computer Science |
| 1994 | 1st degree in TÜBİTAK II. National Science Competition of Marmara Territory on Computer Science |
| 1995 | 3rd degree in TÜBİTAK III. National Science Competition of Turkey on Computer Science |
| 1995 | 2nd degree in TÜBİTAK III. National Science Competition of Marmara Territory on Computer Science |
| 1995 | 2nd degree in TÜBİTAK High School Students Research Project Competition on Computer Science |
| 1995 | Represented Turkey in 1995 London International Youth Science Forum (Sponsored by British Council) on Computer Science. |
| 1996 | Due to my existence in LIYSF'95 I have been invited to the U.N. Lux 1996 (23rd - 28th August 1996) which was an international UN simulation held in Luxembourg. This conference does not deal with science but focuses on international diplomacy. Due to the extensive responsibilies that the participation of this diplomatical conference required, I prefered not to represent Turkey and let the more elaborately equipped students for the subject to be chosen, as being a legitimite engineering student. |
| 1996 | Graduation from my high school with an honor degree. |
| 1996-2000 | Go to "Manzara", go to Akmerkez, return back to "Manzara", play Backgammon on the grass, go back to Taksim, return home.
Trying to be a mechanical engineer, graduating with the 6th rank, but still being a more computer engineer than I am a mechanical engineer :) :( |
| 2000 | Winning the University Record Committee Elections; programming the first web site for a record committee in Turkey which receives the write-up texts from the Internet and providing the texts to the printing house directly, hence, producing a 0% error rate in typography (assuming that everybody checks his/her write-ups :). |
| 2001 | Programmed AIRSIM, an air-flow simulator for ARÇELİK used in the development of ORBİTAL series refrigerators.
Programmed a dance portal called unidance.com for fun.
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| 2002 | 1st rank in my Master Degree Graduation in Bosphorus University.
Being the first one to complete Systems and Control Engineering with GPA of 4.00.
Being the first one to complete Systems and Control Engineering in 4 semesters. |
| 2003 | Designing/Programming the first Turkish License Plate Recognition Software. |
| 2004 | Designing/Programming the first Computer Vision based Filling Quality Control Automation System. Used in BPGaz/Turkey for quality control of their filling lines. |
| 2005 | Completion of my PhD lessons on Computer Science with GPA of 3.94 out of 4.00 (yes I got a BA from Graph Theory, but still a good performance without entering the lessons :) and winning the qualification exams for the PhD degree with the 2nd best position. |
| 2005 | 2nd degree in SIU 2005 National Conference Best Paper Contest in Turkey |
| 2006 | Porting the INFMT/G Fortran'77 VAX code to today's PCs for BRISA. The code is actively being used for production of tyres in Turkey. |
| 2007 | Designing/Programming the first Computer Vision based Gas Filling Automation System. Used for automatic filling of the gas tanks. |
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Master Thesis (in the field of Industrial Engineering):
Kıraç, Furkan, "Genetic Algorithm Approach to Parallel Machine Total Tardiness Problem" [PDF]
PhD Thesis (in the field of Computer Science):
Human Motion Understanding
Currently working on Active Contours, Active Shape Models, Active Appearence Models, Particle Filters, Annealed Particle Filters, 3D human body simulation (preferably a female model :), OpenGL, DirectX, ...
Publications & Papers:
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Ümit Bilge, Furkan Kıraç, Müjde Kurtulan and Pelin Pekgün,
"A Tabu Search Algorithm for Parallel Machine Total Tardiness Problem", Research Paper FBE-IE-09/2001-11, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, 2001. [PDF]
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Ümit Bilge, Furkan Kıraç, Müjde Kurtulan, Pelin Pekgün, A Tabu Search Algorithm for Parallel Machine Total Tardiness Problem, Computers and Operations Research, v.31 n.3, p.397-414, March 2004
- Ümit Bilge, Furkan Kıraç, Müjde Kurtulan,
"A Tabu Search Algorithm for Single Machine Total Weighted Tardiness Problem" (Not yet published)
- Ümit Bilge, Furkan Kıraç, Müjde Kurtulan,
"A Genetic Algorithm for Single Machine Total Weighted Tardiness Problem" (Not yet published)
- Ümit Bilge, Furkan Kıraç,
"An Adaptive Genetic Algorithm Approach for Parallel Machine Total Weighted Tardiness Problem" (Not yet published)
- Furkan Kıraç, Lale Akarun,
"Human Hand Tracking in Image Sequence using Particle Filters" [PDF]
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Conferences Attended
- EUROINFORMS 2003 (July 06-10, 2003)
Furkan Kıraç, Ümit Bilge, Müjde Kurtulan, "Genetic Algorithm Approach to Parallel Machine Total Tardiness Problem" [PPT]
- SIU 2005 (May 16-18, 2005)
Furkan Kıraç, Lale Akarun, "Human Hand Tracking in Image Sequence using Particle Filters" [PDF]
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This site has passed through the following domains:
http://www.tripod.com/~furkan (1995, Internet was still a child by then)
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Horizon/3593/ (1997)
http://me2000.virtualave.net/ (1998)
http://www.fkirac.net/ (finally) (2002)
(It has been here for 12 years by 2007! Well time passes quickly)
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