Chemical Engineering

I'm Mesut Yılmazoğlu. I am working as a doctoral faculty member in the Department of Chemical and Process Engineering at Yalova University. I completed my undergraduate education at Istanbul University, Department of Chemical Engineering, and my doctoral education at Istanbul Technical University, Department of Chemical Engineering. Since 2010, I have been a part of the academic staff in the Department of Chemical and Process Engineering at Yalova University. I have been working as a doctoral faculty member here since 2017. At the same time, I perform other duties as the vice chair of the Department of Chemical and Process Engineering. Our department was established in 2010 within the Faculty of Engineering of Yalova University. As of the 2011-2012 academic year, we started accepting students. Within the department, there are a total of 15 academic staff, including 1 professor doctor, 3 associate professors, 5 doctoral faculty members, 3 research assistant doctors, 2 research assistants and 1 lecturer. We can think of the courses we teach in the Department of Chemical and Process Engineering in two categories as basic engineering courses at the undergraduate level and departmental field courses. Basic engineering courses are Mathematics 1, Mathematics 2, Physics 1, Physics 2, General Chemistry, Computer Applications, and Technical Drawing, which are the common courses offered to all the departments within the Faculty of Engineering. Departmental field courses in chemical engineering discipline includes thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, chemical reaction engineering, reactor design, heat transfer, mass transfer and separation processes. In the Department of Chemical and Process Engineering, we have student laboratories and laboratories where research and development (R&D) activities and scientific research activities are carried out. In the laboratories where our scientific research activities are carried out, such as the extractive metallurgy laboratory, the catalyst laboratory, the food processing laboratory, the analytical chemistry laboratory, as well as the laboratories where scientific research activities are carried out jointly by our faculty members working in different fields within the discipline of chemical engineering, are open to the use of both our students and academic staff. In other universities, it may be considered very normal for laboratories to be available only to graduate students, students at the thesis stage and academic staff. Unlike other universities, we encourage all undergraduate students to participate in scientific research activities with faculty members. In our department, undergraduate students are required to complete 3 internships during their studies. These internships are called production1, production2 and laboratory internship. Production1 and production2 internships, which can be done at any chemical plant at all stages of production such as process design, process control and factory design, are applications that will help them to gain insight about factory design before graduation. Apart from this, they will perform laboratory internships. Laboratory internships and Production1 and Production2 internships are determined by our department as fifteen days each. In our department, we give students a compulsory graduation project application in their last year. In the graduation project course, we assign a faculty member responsible for the students. Students also carry out research activities on the subjects given by this faculty member regarding their fields of study. They also experience a scientific research environment in laboratories.
In our department, student exchange applications are carried out within the scope of Erasmus, Mevlana and Farabi exchange programs. As of 2014, within the scope of Erasmus, our students have been going abroad for six or eight months of periods to the universities in countries such as Lithuania, Slovakia, Estonia and Bulgaria. All academic staff in our department participate in congresses, symposiums and seminars abroad with the funds they receive from TÜBİTAK (The Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey). Within the scope of their studies, they can also be granted funds that are allocated by the scientific research budgets of the university. There, they have the opportunity to share their academic studies with experts in their fields. Our university supports us in that sense. In that regard, the National Spectroscopy Congress was held in Yalova University in 2019. This congress was organized and carried out by a delegation under the chairmanship of our department’s faculty member, Professor Jülide Hızal Yücesoy. After graduating from the Department of Chemical Engineering, our students have a wide range of job opportunities in both the private and public sectors. In the private sector, they have job opportunities in all areas of production, such as agriculture, pharmaceuticals, petrochemicals, textiles, polymers, rubber, tire, and so on. They can work as a process engineer with the title of chemical engineer. At the same time, they can work like a chemist because our department provides an intensive laboratory training. So, they can acquire the fundamentals of that discipline and its principles adequately. They can also work as analysts in laboratories in the industry. In other words, they can perform all kinds of work that a chemist can do, not only as a process engineer in the production sector, but also as a chemical engineer. So, let's talk about the job opportunities in the public sector. I already mentioned that they can work in most of the fields in the private sector where production takes place. In public; They can find jobs in the Mechanical Chemical industry and Mineral Research Exploration. With the KPSS A Group exam, they can pursue job opportunities in the positions of assistant specialists and assistant inspectors. They need to research all of them. As I just mentioned, they have a wide range of job opportunities wherever there is a production. As a faculty member, my first recommendation to the candidates who will prefer our department is not to make their choices according to their score. Because we want to train students who really want to be a part of this department. Let everything come from the heart, and everything be done with merit. All of the faculty members in our department are the graduates of either the best universities in Turkey or the prestigious universities abroad. For this reason, they will be able to find all the opportunities they can find in those universities, here. Our university also has another advantage. Due to the low number of both the students admitted to our department and the academic staff in our department, the communication between the students and the members of our department is much more direct. Therefore, both academically and scientifically, we are as capable as the other universities. We claim to be on the same level. We claim that we will be better in the coming years. We expect students to choose us without ignoring this. Finally, I wish success to all candidates who will take the exam. As I have just mentioned, I am waiting for all candidates who are really interested in this profession.