Artificial Intelligence Engineering (English)
About the Department
The Department with the Highest Admission Score
Artificial Intelligence Engineering
at Istanbul Medipol University
Artificial intelligence is regarded as the electricity of the 21st century. In the years ahead, there will be no profession, no sector and no academic discipline left untouched by artificial intelligence. Building on this reality, our university is launching an ambitious transformation that will reshape the understanding of higher education in Turkey.
As a first step, together with our Faculty of Engineering, we offered prospective physicians receiving medical education in our country an AI-focused double major program in Computer Engineering. Within this scope, the students of our Faculty of Medicine whom we first admitted in 2017 completed their education in line with applications of artificial intelligence in medicine and graduated as Turkey's first dual-degree engineer-physicians.
Educational Approach
Istanbul Medipol University: A Pioneer in Artificial Intelligence Education
The achievements of our graduates on the international stage have increased interest in our program with each passing year. As a university, by bringing together Turkey's most successful students, we have taken our place among the institutions that admit students with the highest minimum admission score.
Some of our graduates published scientific papers in prestigious journals such as Nature while still students; many others we have graduated with at least three Q1-level publications.
Building on the success of artificial intelligence in the field of healthcare, and in order to ensure that this technology is used effectively not only in healthcare but across a wide range of fields, we established our Department of Artificial Intelligence Engineering within our Faculty of Engineering in 2025.
Our department, which admits only 10 fully-scholarshiped students, surpassed all Artificial Intelligence Engineering programs in Turkey in its very first year, admitting students with a national ranking as low as 337th, and took its place at the top.
With our program, we proudly achieved the following:
- 1st in Turkey in the field of artificial intelligence
- 4th in Turkey in the field of engineering
- 7th in Turkey in the quantitative score type.
We achieved this great success by building a comprehensive career program for our successful students, extending from undergraduate education to doctoral studies.
Through this career program, carefully prepared by our faculty members who possess both academic expertise and strong industry experience, we have trained our students in a well-rounded manner.
We have provided our students with experience across a wide spectrum—from academic research to international internships, and from international conferences to social responsibility projects such as science olympiads.
Vision
Vision of the
Artificial Intelligence
Engineering Department
The goal of our Department of Artificial Intelligence Engineering is to carry artificial intelligence beyond being a field confined solely to the faculty of engineering, making it an integral part of education, research and innovation, thereby establishing Turkey's first Artificial Intelligence Integrated University. In line with this vision, we have set as our core objective the redesign of all our educational programs and the transformation of every discipline into a new educational model that integrates artificial intelligence with the accumulated knowledge of its own field.
Artificial Intelligence Across All Disciplines
The Artificial Intelligence Transformation Across All Faculties
We have integrated artificial intelligence courses into the curriculum of our Faculty of Law. In this way, we ensure that our students not only learn the law but also gain competency in the fields that will shape the legal world of the future.
Some of these fields are as follows:
- Generative artificial intelligence
- Large language models
- Legal technologies
- Algorithmic decision-making
- Digital evidence
- Artificial intelligence ethics
We are launching a new era in the humanities. We are transforming our Department of History into the History and Artificial Intelligence program. We are adding the analysis of historical data, digital archives, and the study of cultural heritage through artificial intelligence as core components of our curriculum.
We are launching the undergraduate programs in Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence, and Business Administration and Artificial Intelligence. In these programs, which will be among the pioneering examples of interdisciplinary education in Turkey, we will teach our students not only the core knowledge and methods of their own fields, but also advanced topics in artificial intelligence at a high level.
Some of these topics are as follows:
- Machine learning
- Large language models
- Generative artificial intelligence
- Data science
- Artificial intelligence applications
In this way, we will train our graduates to be leaders equipped with the knowledge and competency needed to transform their own disciplines with artificial intelligence.
We are not limiting our university's transformation to the social sciences alone. We are also restructuring the first two years of our six-year medical education program with an artificial-intelligence-focused approach.
We aim to graduate the physicians of the future with a strong foundation in the following areas:
- Artificial intelligence literacy
- Biomedical data analysis
- Medical imaging
- Clinical decision support systems
- Digital health technologies
Through this approach, we are turning artificial intelligence from being merely a single course or department into the common language of our university.
We are making interdisciplinary research—in which our engineering students can work with our lawyers, our historians with our AI engineers, our business students with our data scientists, and our physicians with our computer scientists on the same projects—a core part of our university's research culture.
We place scientific excellence at the center of this transformation. As a university, we have designed a dedicated academic development program for students who enroll in programs such as Medicine, Artificial Intelligence Engineering and Computer Engineering by achieving specific rankings of success in the national university entrance examination (YKS).
Through the research opportunities we provide to these students, we offer them the chance to publish scientific papers in international journals in the Q1 category.
Additional Award
Aziz Sancar Doctoral Scholarship
We present the Aziz Sancar Doctoral Scholarship as an additional award to our students who demonstrate outstanding academic achievement during their undergraduate studies and receive a fully funded doctoral admission from a university ranked in the top 50 of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings.
We do not view this scholarship merely as a support measure that encourages individual achievement. We also implement it as a strategic move toward training scientists with the competency to conduct scientific work at the world's most distinguished institutions, and toward strengthening our country's position in the global scientific race.
Educational Approach and Career Program
Career Program
We offer our students admitted to the Department of Artificial Intelligence Engineering a career program that goes beyond a scholarship. This program is built on four core pillars extending from the preparatory year to doctoral studies.
- 1 Language and Vision Pillar
- 2 Education Pillar
- 3 Undergraduate Specialization Pillar
- 4 Doctoral Education Pillar
1
Language and Vision Pillar
We aim to equip our students with both advanced proficiency in English and a global vision. Students who begin their language education in the first semester of the preparatory year with the support of our native-English-speaking instructors take the first steps of their career planning through company visits and weekly research meetings.
The most important part of this pillar is the five-month study-abroad language program in the spring semester. Depending on their visa status, students receive education at select schools in the following countries:
During this process, students observe globally relevant problems being worked on by visiting companies and research centers in the countries where they are staying. Tuition, accommodation and transportation expenses are entirely covered by our university.
2
Education Pillar
Having completed their language education, our students receive both theoretical and practical training on our campus through laboratory-intensive courses, working with top-tier equipment in AI-based courses.
Students who become involved in research projects starting from the preparatory year develop their practical experience through summer internships at partner institutions. They also gain national and international experience through the events they organize:
Artificial Intelligence Day Conference
Fall Semester
Artificial Intelligence Hackathon
Spring Semester
Medipol Science Olympiads
Mathematics, chemistry, biology
3
Undergraduate Specialization Pillar
Students choose to specialize either in the subject of their research projects or in a new field, and carry out their academic internships abroad accordingly. Students who are unable to secure admission abroad are placed at the leading partner institutions with which we have agreements:
Accommodation, transportation and meal expenses during the internship are covered by our university. Students are expected to publish at the Q1 level as part of their capstone projects and overseas internships—previous students have successfully achieved this goal, even appearing as first authors in the journal Nature.
Students who complete their capstone project may continue their careers in industry, start their own company, or proceed to the fourth stage of the program.
4
Doctoral Education Pillar
For our students who apply for doctoral programs in the Fall semester of their fourth year, receiving direct admission abroad is a common outcome. Students who wish may also obtain a master's degree from our university through the integrated master's pathway.
Our students with Q1 publications and project experience, particularly those who interned with overseas researchers in the summer of their third year, may receive doctoral admission from those same researchers.
Additional Award
Aziz Sancar Doctoral Scholarship — Doctoral admission must be fully funded, from a university ranked in the top 50 of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. If the amount of the overseas scholarship is below 40,000 US dollars per year, our university completes the amount up to 40,000 dollars.
The process lasts four years and is expected to be completed within that period. Students whose scholarship amount exceeds 40,000 dollars are offered an annual conference support of 5,000 US dollars.
A Supportive and Selective Academic Environment
Our Department of Artificial Intelligence Engineering offers a distinctive and high-quality learning environment through its student selection and academic support policies. The program has a selective structure in which only candidates with high academic potential and a particular interest in the discipline of engineering are admitted. Thanks to the limited quota, every student receives individual attention and guidance; all admitted students receive a full scholarship covering not only tuition fees but also living expenses.
Support Provided
- Accommodation support
- Preparatory-year course materials
- Book support
- Research support
Target Qualities
- Critical thinking
- Ability to work across disciplines
- Ability to apply artificial intelligence to many different fields
- Digital competence
- Intellectual courage
Our goal is to prepare a body of highly talented students equipped with these qualities to become the designers of tomorrow's artificial intelligence models, capable of contributing on a global scale.
Academic Staff
Academic Staff and Close Interaction
Our students will be trained not merely to receive knowledge, but to become individuals who develop artificial intelligence models in various projects, cultivate high awareness at both the national and international level through various activities, and contribute to society through social responsibility projects.
We aim to train, within our university, the generation that will carry our country's work in the field of artificial intelligence into the future.
Our Faculty
Prof. Dr. Mehmet Kemal Özdemir
Prof. Dr. Reda AlHajj
Prof. Dr. Selim Akyokuş
Prof. Dr. Cem Ünsalan
Prof. Dr. Selçuk Demir
Assistant Professor Rahmi Maraşlı
Assistant Professor Ahmet Kaplan
Assistant Professor Mehrdad Khadivi