Who is Selçuk Bayraktar, the architect of Turkish SİHAs?

WHO IS SELÇUK BAYRAKTAR?

Selçuk Bayraktar was born in 1979 in Istanbul-Sarıyer. He graduated from Robert College, a foreign school that trains the most valuable minds in Turkey, in 1997. Between 1997-2002, he completed the Electronics and Communication Engineering Department of ITU, which is considered one of the best universities in Turkey. During his university education, he received an internship acceptance from the GRASP laboratory of the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn). With the scholarship offer he received within the scope of his internship, he continued his graduate education in Upenn in the Department of Electrical Engineering between 2002-2004. Within the scope of his research, he carried out studies that were the subject of scientific publications on the formation flight experiments of UAVs, the coordination of air-ground robot teams, flight control and guidance systems for the first time in the world.

After completing his master's education, he received a master's-doctorate offer with a scholarship from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) due to his outstanding achievements during his studies. During his education at MIT, he carried out studies in the field of automatic flight control algorithms that will give the Unmanned Helicopter Systems the ability to perform aggressive maneuvers. He received his second master's degree from MIT Aerospace Engineering in 2006. He returned to Turkey in 2007 by freezing his doctoral studies, which he continued at Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) after MIT, in order to carry out the national and original unmanned aerial vehicle technologies development activities that started within Baykar in 2003.

He has been working as a technology leader at Baykar since 2007. The avionics system architecture, flight control, development of navigation algorithms, system kinematics and dynamics, electronic hardware and embedded software development etc. of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Systems developed within Baykar. works on issues.

Bayraktar MINI UAV, Turkey's first domestic and national Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, and Bayraktar TB2 S/UAV system, which entered the TAF inventory in 2014 and is shown as the best in the world in its class, leaving behind 400 thousand successful flight hours today. Bayraktar also led the fight initiated in Turkey against the COVID-19 epidemic that affected the world in December 2019 and carried out domestic intensive care ventilator development activities. As a result of these studies, the domestic breathing apparatus produced by BIOSYS, BAYKAR, ASELSAN and ARÇELİK has been exported and donated to many countries of the world by Turkey.

Bayraktar TB2 SİHAs, developed by Baykar, were awarded the Karabakh Order of the Republic of Azerbaijan for their contribution to the liberation of Karabakh from the occupation of Armenia. The Order of Karabakh was presented to Bayraktar by the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev at a ceremony held in Baku on April 1, 2021.

Selçuk Bayraktar is currently leading the development activities of the 6-tonne Bayraktar AKINCI TİHA, Turkey's first Assault UAV system. Participating in national and original technology development studies outside the defense industry, Bayraktar is also at the head of the team that developed Turkey's first flying car, CEZERİ.

Bayraktar, who married Sümeyye Erdoğan Bayraktar, the daughter of Turkey's most elected political leader, Tayyip Erdoğan, in 2016, is the father of one child. He has a private pilot's license.

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