CoHE to Train Engineers with Doctoral Degrees for “Domestic and
National Defense Industry”
February 16, 2020
The Council of Higher Education (CoHE) added seven scientific fields,
including submarine designs, legged, biomechanical robots, satellite
design, and radar and stealth technologies, to the CoHE 100/2000 PhD
Scholarship Project to contribute to Turkey’s domestic and national
technological move in the defense industry.
In his statement, CoHE President Prof. M. A. Yekta Saraç said that the
number of doctoral students studying in the 100 priority thematic fields
needed by Turkey under the CoHE 100/2000 PhD Scholarship Project is 4
thousand 250 and that they aimed to increase this figure to 5 thousand by
the end of 2020. He noted that they would have achieved many of the goals
in the 11th Development Plan by the end of the year, including the CoHE
100/2000 PhD Scholarship Project.
He said that the candidates who met the success criteria defined by TUBITAK
benefitted from the opportunity of “double scholarship” in addition to the
scholarship granted by CoHE. He added that the amount of the scholarship
would become 4 thousand 700 Turkish liras per month.
Saraç said that they worked diligently on the priority scientific fields of
Turkey to which CoHE would give scholarships to under the project. He
emphasized that CoHE considered the suggestions of institutions and
organizations for training PhD holders in their respective fields while
determining thematic fields.
Lastly, he said that he discussed with the President of Defence Industries,
Prof. İsmail Demir, about the fields in the defense industry which require
people with doctoral degrees, and that the experts from CoHE and the
Presidency of Defence Industries presented their suggestions to CoHE after
working on the topic.
“As CoHE, we review and update the 100 priority fields in line with the
priorities of our country as a result of discussions with the relevant
public institutions in each call period. In this call, we added new fields
to the project. In this scope, the fields of defense technologies, defense
systems integration, defense informatics, modeling, and simulation have
been opened before. In line with the suggestions of the Presidency of
Defence Industries, we added seven scientific fields which are 'smart and
innovative materials' including defense material technologies, 'naval and
marine engineering' including submarine design, 'defense technologies'
including invisibility technologies, satellite design, radar technologies,
guidance technologies, 'advanced robotic systems and mechatronics'
including fields such as legged robots, biorobotics, biomechanics,
human-robot interoperability, 'remote sensing and geographic information
systems' including advanced data processing issues, 'data science and cloud
computing' including big data technologies and 'artificial intelligence and
machine learning.' These new scientific fields also point to the
technologies of the future. In this respect, these fields are extremely
important in the defense industry," he said.
Saraç said that CoHE received applications from higher education
institutions after posting a call for doctoral programs on the new fields
in the defense industry and that they completed a significant part of the
process.
He also announced that CoHE had completed the evaluation process of the
applications and added, “Those who want to do a PhD at designated
universities will be able to apply to these universities determined by CoHE
in a few days. We invite idealistic, patriotic and science-loving young
researchers who want to contribute to Turkey’s goal of domestic and
national defense industry to do their doctoral studies in these fields.”
- The ratio of domestic output in defense industry has increased to 70%
The number of defense projects that have been conducted under the
Presidency of Defense Industries has reached 700. The budget of the defense
industry has reached a project volume of 60 billion dollars. The turnover
of the sector, which was $1 billion in 2002, increased to $9 billion today.
The research and development expenditure in the field reached $1.5 billion.
The ratio of domestic outputs of the defense industry in Turkey has reached
70% in Turkey.
Source: Anadolu Agency