Derya Akkaynak is a Turkish mechanical engineer and oceanographer at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. She was a 2019 finalist for the

Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists was established in 2007 through a partnership between the Blavatnik Family Foundation, headed by Leonard Blavatnik (Russian: Леонид Валентинович Блаватник), chairman of Access Indu ...

Early life and education

Akkaynak is from the Aegean coast of Turkey. After completing her primary and secondary education at

TED Ankara College TED Ankara College Foundation Schools is a group of private schools in Turkey. It consists of kindergarten, elementary, middle and high schools. Its İncek Campus, considered sizeable with 141,000 square meters of enclosed and over 309,000 square ...

and graduating in 1998, she studied

aerospace engineering Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Avionics engineering is s ...

at the

Middle East Technical University Middle East Technical University (commonly referred to as METU; in Turkish language, Turkish, ''Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi'', ODTÜ) is a prestigious public university, public Institute of technology, technical university located in Ankara, ...

, where she graduated top of her class in 2003. She moved to the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

after graduating, where she earned a master's degree in

Aeronautics Aeronautics is the science or art involved with the study, design process, design, and manufacturing of air flight-capable machines, and the techniques of operating aircraft and rockets within the atmosphere. While the term originally referred ...

at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

in 2005. Her Master's dissertation involved investigations into fuel cells for the improvement of on-site emergency power availability in nuclear power plants. After graduating Akkaynak worked as a consultant in risk analysis. She decided to return to school, and started a doctoral degree in oceanography at the

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI, acronym pronounced ) is a private, nonprofit research and higher education facility dedicated to the study of marine science and engineering. Established in 1930 in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, it i ...

. For her doctoral work, Akkaynak worked on computational methods to model the camouflage of

cephalopods A cephalopod is any member of the molluscan Taxonomic rank, class Cephalopoda (Greek language, Greek plural , ; "head-feet") such as a squid, octopus, cuttlefish, or nautilus. These exclusively marine animals are characterized by bilateral symm ...

under the supervision of Ruth Rosenholtz and Roger Hanlon. She developed a means to calibrate and correct underwater colour, introduced an equation that could quantify the spectral contamination, used ''in situ'' spectrometry to colour match cuttlefish to their background and created a new computational approach to quantify patterns. In 2011 Akkaynak founded Divers4Oceanography, a

citizen science The term citizen science (synonymous to terms like community science, crowd science, crowd-sourced science, civic science, participatory monitoring, or volunteer monitoring) is research conducted with participation from the general public, or am ...

project that collects ocean temperature data from divers all around the world. She worked at the

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI, ) is located in Panama and is the only bureau of the Smithsonian Institution based outside of the United States. It is dedicated to understanding the past, present, and future of tropical ecosyst ...

throughout 2015.

Research and career

After completing a short term fellowship in

Panama Panama, officially the Republic of Panama, is a country in Latin America at the southern end of Central America, bordering South America. It is bordered by Costa Rica to the west, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north, and ...

, Akkaynak moved to the

University of Haifa The University of Haifa (, ) is a public research university located on Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel. Founded in 1963 as a branch of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of Haifa received full academic accreditation as an inde ...

. She was appointed a postdoctoral fellow at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

in 2018, before joining Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute as an engineer in 2019. Underwater photography is often compromised by dull and incorrect colours. Akkaynak developed ''Sea-thru'', an algorithm that can remove the artefacts and distortions that occur in underwater imagery. ''Sea-thru'' accounts for differences in underwater and atmospheric light scattering and absorption, reversing water-based image distortion, as well as accommodating for the spectral sensitivity of underwater cameras. To perform the corrections, ''Sea-thru'' requires multiple RAW images of the same scene from a variety of angles, which it uses to estimate the distance between the camera and the object being imaged. In 2019 Akkaynak was named a finalist for the

for "significant breakthroughs and advancements in computer vision and underwater imaging technologies". She is the first Turkish scientist to receive this award. She was also awarded the 2019 Award in Science Photography by the Art of Photography Federation of Turkey.

Personal life

Akkaynak is a

Professional Association of Diving Instructors The Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) is a recreational diving membership and diver training organization founded in 1966 by John Cronin and Ralph Erickson. PADI courses range from entry level to advanced recreational diver ...

certified divemaster and ice diver. She dives for the

American Academy of Underwater Sciences The American Academy of Underwater Sciences (AAUS) is a group of scientific organizations and individual members who conduct scientific and educational activities underwater. It was organized in 1977 and incorporated in the State of California in ...

. She has led underwater fieldwork in the

Bering Sea The Bering Sea ( , ; rus, Бе́рингово мо́ре, r=Béringovo móre, p=ˈbʲerʲɪnɡəvə ˈmorʲe) is a marginal sea of the Northern Pacific Ocean. It forms, along with the Bering Strait, the divide between the two largest landmasse ...

Caribbean The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America ...

Red Sea The Red Sea is a sea inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. Its connection to the ocean is in the south, through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden. To its north lie the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and th ...

and her home ocean, the

Aegean Sea The Aegean Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Asia. It is located between the Balkans and Anatolia, and covers an area of some . In the north, the Aegean is connected to the Marmara Sea, which in turn con ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Akkaynak, Derya Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Turkish women academics 21st-century Turkish women scientists 21st-century Turkish scientists 21st-century Turkish engineers People from the Aegean Region Middle East Technical University alumni TED Ankara College Foundation Schools alumni Florida Atlantic University faculty Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Turkish expatriate academics in the United States Turkish expatriates in Israel Women oceanographers Optical engineers Turkish mechanical engineers Women in optics