Mehmet Kerem Turkcan

Associate Research Scientist in Civil Engineering & Engineering Mechanics at Columbia University

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210E 2276 12th Avenue

Columbia University

New York, New York 10027

Greetings! I am currently an associate research scientist in the Center for Smart Streetscapes (CS3) and Civil Engineering & Engineering Mechanics at Columbia University specializing in computer vision and deep learning applications. Before, I was a postdoctoral research scientist in Electrical Engineering. My research focuses on real-world, low-latency deployment of object detection and trajectory prediction models, and retrieval-augmented generation via large language models. To test algorithms, I lead projects on large-scale data collection and annotation, and improve upon the state-of-the-art models to adapt them to the strict performance and quality requirements of real-world use cases. Right now, my focus is specifically on applications to urban streetscapes and robotic surgeries.

Previously, as a member of the Bionet group, I studied the efficient initialization and execution of very-large-scale, real connectome and synaptome driven, single-synapse-level simulations of neural circuits on GPUs for the purpose of understanding realistic neural networks. Using the tools I developed, I worked on the design of computational circuits for understanding the mushroom body and the lateral horn, two brain regions in insects linked with associative and evolutionary memories. I am also one of the main developers of an open-source interactive neuroscientific computing platform called FlyBrainLab (FBL) that enables access to, manipulation of and simulations for fruit fly brain data.

News

Jul 16, 2024 I am now an Associate Research Scientist in the Civil Engineering & Engineering Mechanics at Columbia University!
Jun 5, 2024 Our paper, “Data-Driven Traffic Simulation for an Intersection in a Metropolis”, has been accepted into the POETS Workshop at CVPR 2024!
May 7, 2024 Our paper, “Evaluating Zero-Shot Image Tagging for Urban Traffic Intersection Scenes”, has been accepted into the VAND Workshop at CVPR 2024!
May 1, 2024 I will be a Co-Chair of the CS3 Student Leadership Council of the Center for Smart Streetscapes for the 2024-2025 cycle!
Apr 29, 2024 I received the Electrical Engineering Distinguished Teaching Award for my teaching achievements in 2023!

Selected Publications

  1. ffbo.png
    The Fruit Fly Brain Observatory: From Structure to Function
    Nikul H Ukani, Chung-Heng Yeh, Adam Tomkins, and 8 more authors
    BioRxiv, 2019
  2. neuromynerva_example.png
    Accelerating with FlyBrainLab the discovery of the functional logic of the Drosophila brain in the connectomic and synaptomic era
    Aurel A Lazar, Tingkai Liu, Mehmet Kerem Turkcan, and 1 more author
    Elife, 2021
  3. frontiers.png
    A Programmable Ontology Encompassing the Functional Logic of the Drosophila Brain
    Aurel A Lazar, Mehmet Kerem Turkcan, and Yiyin Zhou
    Frontiers in Neuroinformatics, 2022
  4. surg_mdpi.png
    Surgical Phase Recognition in Inguinal Hernia Repair—AI-Based Confirmatory Baseline and Exploration of Competitive Models
    Chengbo Zang, Mehmet Kerem Turkcan, Sanjeev Narasimhan, and 8 more authors
    Bioengineering, 2023
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    StreetNav: Leveraging street cameras to support precise outdoor navigation for blind pedestrians
    Gaurav Jain, Basel Hindi, Zihao Zhang, and 8 more authors
    In Proceedings of the 37th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, 2024
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    Boundless: Generating Photorealistic Synthetic Data for Object Detection in Urban Streetscapes
    Mehmet Kerem Turkcan, Yuyang Li, Chengbo Zang, and 3 more authors
    2024
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    Constellation Dataset: Benchmarking High-Altitude Object Detection for an Urban Intersection
    Mehmet Kerem Turkcan, Sanjeev Narasimhan, Chengbo Zang, and 6 more authors
    2024
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    Examining the Influence of Varied Levels of Domain Knowledge Base Inclusion in GPT-based Intelligent Tutors
    Blake Castleman, and Mehmet Kerem Turkcan
    In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Educational Data Mining, Jul 2024
  9. carladt.png
    Digital twin for pedestrian safety warning at a single urban traffic intersection
    Yongjie Fu, Mehmet K Turkcan, Vikram Anantha, and 3 more authors
    In 2024 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV), Jul 2024