The second talk of METU  Informatics Institute monthly Friday Seminarsseries will be given by Prof. Dr. Rengül Çetin-Atalay from METUInformatics Institute Health Informatics Program:

“Personalized Medicine in Cancer Through Bioinformatics”.

Location: METU Informatics Institute Conference Room (124)

Time: 4 May 2018, 15:30-16:30.

This seminar is open to public and those outside METU have to register from here.

Abstract: Due to the recent advances in molecular biology and the applications of optoelectronic sensors, the volume of biological data in biomedical research has increased significantly. We now acquire large data sets which provides the novel insights for the biology of a disease, in particular for cancer which is recently reported as the most-deadly disease by WHO. The analysis of the molecular characteristics of a patient’s disease through computational tools allows patient stratification for better healthcare which is tailored for personalized prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. In this talk I will summarize recent advances on personalized cancer medicine with a special focus on related KanSiLab studies.

Short Bio: Dr. Rengul Cetin-Atalay holds MD degree and PhD degree in Systems Biology and her research falls in the broad fields of pathway analysis, bioinformatics and biomedical-image analysis and specifically in molecular cellular biology of primary liver cancer. She worked as a research assistant at Ecole Polytechnique, Paris, France during her PhD, and as an assistant professor at Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), USA during her sabbatical leave in 2004.  She is the recipient of several awards including Turkish Academy of Sciences Young Investigator Award (2002), UICC International Cancer Technology Transfer Award (2008), and Sanovel Pharmaceuticals Inc, Drug Research Award (2013). During the last decade, she extended her studies on the discovery of novel chemotherapeutics for liver cancer by the application of computational techniques on the analysis of pharmaco-transcriptomics data.  Her experience in the interdisciplinary research approach in cancer biology with various aspects of this disease, devotes  her research towards personalized medicine.

Graduate School of Informatics /Information Systems

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Mehmet Erdem Örs will defend his thesis.

Title: ACCEPTANCE OF MOBILE PAYMENT TECHNOLOGIES: THE STATE-OF-THE-ART AND PROPOSED MODEL

Date: 05th May 2018

Time: 15:00 AM

Place: A-108

Thesis Abstract : This thesis aims to develop a technology adoption model by inspecting acceptance of mobile payment (MP) systems literature from different perspectives. This study can be divided into two main parts. In the first part of the thesis, acceptance of mobile payment systems is examined in detail. In the second part, a technology acceptance model is developed by using the findings of literature. Related literature is reviewed from 2005 to end of March 2018. Literature review provides information about studies’ location, sample size, theoretical background, research method, statistical analyses, constructs and significant relationships. As a result of literature review, 11 factors are derived. The factors are validated by an expert panel. Afterwards, a technology acceptance model is proposed based on analysis of the literature. To test the hypotheses of model, a measuring instrument (questionnaire) is formed. Data is collected from 378 participants, however 302 of them are used in the analyses. The model is tested by employing Partial Least Squares – Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). After obtaining results, inter-factor relations are added to the model from literature for testing. In the end, final version of the model is created. Results are fortified with interviews made with participants of the questionnaire. Final findings show that, use of mobile payment systems is affected most by usefulness and compatibility

Title: A PRACTICAL MEASUREMENT CAPABILITY MODEL FOR SOFTWARE ORGANIZATIONS UTILIZING AGILE APPROACHES

PhD Candidate: Murat Salmanoğlu

Program: Information Systems Department 

Date: 16 April Monday 09:00

Place: Conference Hall-01

Abstract: Measurement is the foundation for successful software management. However, it is not easy for software organizations to evaluate their measurement practices and to determine what they should do to improve them. There are models to evaluate capability and maturity of measurement processes. However, they frequently focus on the measurement process with a guidance from a well-defined capability model, like CMMI or SPICE. Many of the software organizations following agile methodologies do not prefer to apply these process-centric maturity models. This study presents a model to assess measurement capability of software organizations by inspecting individual measures, independent from the software development approach and the process architecture organizations use. The model exemplifies measures for aspects and defines generic practices for three capability levels. Organizations can use the model to determine and improve their measurement capability. This research includes action research and exploratory case studies conducted during the development of the model, an explanatory case study conducted to implement the model, and its results. Case studies demonstrate that the model provides additional benefits to organizations utilizing agile approaches while providing similar results with the process-centric models. The findings of the explanatory case study indicate that the results of the model are accepted and found beneficial by the employees from small-, medium- and large-scale organizations that participate in the study.

Title: SYNTACTIC PRIMING OF RELATIVE CLAUSE ATTACHMENT IN MONOLINGUAL TURKISH SPEAKERS AND TURKISH LEARNERS OF ENGLISH

PhD Candidate: Zeynep Başer

Program: Cognitive Science Department 

Date: 24 April Tuesday 10:00

Place: Conference Hall-01

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to investigate the syntactic priming of relative clause attachment in monolingual Turkish speakers and Turkish learners of English with different levels of proficiency in English. Syntactic priming is the facilitation of processing which occurs when a sentence has the same syntactic form as a preceding one. Within the last three decades, a manifold of studies have investigated the phenomenon, especially with native speakers of various languages, yet there is a quite low number of research with monolingual Turkish speakers and Turkish learners of English.Turkish and English belong to typologically different groups of languages. Within the scope of this study, we investigate syntactic priming of relative clause attachments, which enables us to examine and compare the strategies employed for ambiguity resolution both in Turkish and English. The data was collected through offline (pen-and-paper), online (self-paced reading), and eye-tracking studies. The analysis of the data revealed important findings about the parsing strategies employed by both monolingual Turkish speakers and Turkish learners of English. The role of several confounding factors on RC attachment preferences was identified, such as the role of (i) animacy / inanimacy information embedded in the host NPs, (ii) semantic relations between the host NPs, (iii) the semantic associations of the host NPs with the proximal and the distal predicate, and (iv) active / passive RC condition. Furthermore, the relation between working memory capacity and RC attachment preferences was analysed. Besides, effects of methodological issues, such as the presentation mode (i.e. full sentence or phrase-by-phrase), techniques (i.e. offline, online, or eye-tracking), task requirements (i.e. implicit processing or directed assessment of the syntactic structure in the prime) and modality(comprehension or production) were compared.

ODTÜ Lisansüstü Ödülleri Başvuruları

 TEZ ÖDÜLÜ 

 Tez Ödülü’nün amacı, tez konularının ülkemizin gelişimine, kültür ve düşün dünyasına katkıda bulunmasını sağlamak ve ülkemizin temel bilimde araştırma gücünü ODTÜ olarak artırmaktır.

 15 Eylül 2016 – 15 Eylül 2017 tarihleri arasında tez savunmasında başarılı bulunmuş olan tezler ödül için başvurabilir.

 Başvuru, tez sahibi/tez yöneticisi tarafından ilgili Enstitü’ye yapılır. Başvuru için gerekli belgeler: Tez Ödülü Başvuru Formu, bir adet tez kopyası, ve varsa tezden kaynaklanan yayınlar/bildiriler/patent belgesi.

  (Tez Ödülü Başvuru Formu, https://ii.metu.edu.tr/student-forms adresinden alınabilir.)

  Son başvuru tarihi: 06 Nisan 2018

DERS PERFORMANS ÖDÜLÜ

2018 yılında verilecek ders performans ödülü için Enstitüler kriterlere uygun öğrencileri belirleyecektir ayrıca başvuru yapmaya gerek yoktur.

Graduate School of Informatics /Health Informatics

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Ahmet Levent Kandemir will defend his thesis.

Title: RESTING STATE BRAIN CONNECTIVITY VIA BICOHERENCE AND COHERENCE

Date: 21th March 2018

Time: 14:00 AM

Place: B-116

Thesis Abstract : Bicoherence is normalized version of bispectrum. Bispectrum is known as decomposition of the third moment (skewness) of a signal over frequency, and falls in the category of higher-order spectra. It provides supplementary information to the power spectrum and is proven to be useful in various fields of science such as sonars, biomedical engineering, radars etc. Despite this, the extensive computations required for processing of multidimensional data make bispectrum less practical than other methods in signal processing. In this study, information content of bicoherence will be evaluated. The aim is to find a time saving alternative to multidimensional bicoherence estimation. Alternatives will be compared to well known connectivity metric know as coherence. During study, methods will be applied on Resting State MEG data from Human Brain Connectome Project which can be found online.

Graduate School of Informatics /Cognitive Science

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science uğur Acar will defend his thesis.

Title: COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF BRAIN-COMPUTER COMMUNICATION: AN IMPLEMENTATION AND EXTENSION OF THE P300 SPELLER PARADIGM

Date: 15th March 2018

Time: 09:00 AM

Place: A-108

Thesis Abstract :Recently, advances in Brain Computer Interface (BCI) Devices have enabled access by a wider population of end users. Such devices are usually based on neuroimaging techniques such as Electroencephalography (EEG), which pick up characteristic brainwave signatures such as P300 event-related potentials (ERP). In this model, three types of stimuli will be presented. The first type are alphabet letters, the second type are symbols for basic needs, and the last type are words for creation of sentences. Simple sentences may be created including subject, object, and verb. Technically the present model has two parts, a training phase and a testing (prediction) phase. In the training phase, the user concentrates on one of the stimuli among the entire set of alternative stimuli and the application detects a P300 ERP for that target stimulus which captures the selection of the subject. The training phase is used for understanding the neural patterns of each user and thus, it generates a user-specific training model. After the completion of the training phase, the subject will be able to use the application for communication purposes. In the subsequent test phase, the subject will carry out two sets of tasks. First, subjects will use the three sets of items (letters, icons, and words), and create pre-specified target items, e.g., words (from letters), icon sequences, and sentences (from words). In case of incongruence of the intended and the produced item (by the application), a N400 ERP is expected, which will be statistically analyzed. Second, subjects will be given a number of action assignments for whose realization they are free to choose any of the three sets of units (letters, icons, and words). Cognitive strategies underlying the choice of units for efficient communication will be analyzed. In sum, the proposed thesis aims at combining technical and cognitive aspects of the usage of BCI devices for communication.

Graduate School of Informatics /Information Systems

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Murat Vural will defend his thesis.

Title: "ONLINE DETECTION OF PILOT WORKLOAD BY USING FNIR SENSORS." 

Date: 14th March 2018

Time: 16:30 AM

Place: A-212

Thesis Abstract :

Measuring mental workload of pilots and evaluating such measurements are important concerns in the aviation domain that requires high safety critical precautions. However, obtaining valid online measures without reducing operational capabilities of pilots remains to be an active area of research in human factors and aviation psychology. The aim of this thesis is to develop online measures for mental workload of pilots and establish a ground for new studies which will use these measurements to take precautions for safety. Since fNIR (Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy) technology has been successfully employed in recent human factors studies and fNIR sensors have an ergonomic design that minimizes the discomfort of pilots as compared to other brain imaging methods, fNIR optical brain imaging technology will be employed in this thesis study. Firstly, changes in the mental workload of pilots will be studied offline in well-defined test scenarios in order to devise physiological patterns and algorithms for mental workload assessment. Afterwards, a software that can make online mental workload assessment by using these algorithms will be developed and tested.

Cybersecurity Department Applications of Transfer from MSc Non-Thesis to MScThesis are evaluated  and the names of the candidates who are eligible for the transfer to the Thesis Master program are given below.