Education and degrees awarded

Doctor of Philosophy in Public Affairs, (Ph.D.) ‘The Impact of Social Capital on Youth Substance Use’ Chair: Thomas Wan, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA (2009)

Master of Science (M.S.) Administration of Criminal Justice, School of Justice Studies, Roger Williams University, Bristol RI, USA (2006)

Baccalaureate of Art (BA) School of Security Sciences, Turkish National Police Academy, Ankara, Turkey (2000)

Associate Professor, Public Administration, Inter-university Committee, Turkey 2013

 

Current Positions

Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL)

SENIOR RESEARCHER (Since March 2022)

• “Strengthening PREParedness of DRUG information systems and drug policy capacities to respond to emerging drug trends and challenges (DRUG-PREP)(European Commission Funded Project – JUST-DRUGS-AG). Collaboration of six European countries
• Developing drug use prediction models based on National Drug Survey data
• Text mining in social media and analysis of the national trends related to drug discussions
• Aggression and threat rhetoric targeting Muslims and the LGBT community on social media in Finland (Nordic Research Council for Criminology – 2 years individually funded project)
• Reconstructing Crisis Narratives for Trustworthy Communication and Cooperative Agency (Academy of Finland funded project – Collaborative research project between Aalto University and Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL))

VISITING RESEARCHER (May 2020-2022)

• The Challenges of Establishing Drug Consumption Rooms in Helsinki and an Evidence-Based Policy Design (KONE Foundation – Individually funded project)

SENIOR RESEARCHER (May 2019 – 2020)

• Participation as a special expert in the preparation of a systematic literature review commissioned by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health on the effectiveness of preventive activities on alcohol drinking, drug use and smoking

Aalto University / Department of Computer Science

VISITING RESEARCHER (Since May 2022)

• Critical AI and Crisis Interrogatives: The CRAI-CIS Research Group explores the impact of technology across different societal contexts, working at the intersection of computational and social sciences.
• Reconstructing Crisis Narratives for Trustworthy Communication and Cooperative Agency (Academy of Finland funded project – Collaborative research project between Aalto University and Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL))

 

Previous Work Experience

Policy Analyst and National Expert

Jul 2009 – Jul 2016 | Ministry of Interior, Istanbul, Ankara and Sanliurfa – Turkey

• Policy and data analyst (prepared sections in annual national report)
• Developed a national data collection system for retail and wholesale drug price
• Designed and held population surveys (more than 50.000 participants)
• Designed and implemented community outreach programs (more than 20 programs)
• Spokesman of a public institution on drug issues.
• Security analyst on refugee deployment and border security (Sanliurfa)
• Adjunct professor at Fatih University, Ataturk University and National Police Academy

Research Assistant

Aug 2008 – Jun 2009 | University of Central Florida, Orlando Florida USA

Aug 2006 – Jun 2007 | University of Central Florida, Orlando Florida USA

Research Associate

September 2007 – Jun 2008 | Ninth Judicial Circuit, Orange County, Orlando Florida USA

Analyzed county-level juvenile crime data who are in prisons

RESEARCH ASSISTANT

Aug 2005 – Jun 2006 | Roger Williams University, Bristol RI USA

 

Research Experience

AGGRESSION AND THREAT RHETORIC TARGETING MUSLIMS AND THE LGBT COMMUNITY ON SOCIAL MEDIA IN FINLAND (continuing)

• Detecting far right groups on social media
• Comparing the content of posts targeting Muslims and LGBT community in terms of hate speech/violent threat context
• Timeline analysis of social media posts with actual hate crimes in Finland
• The impact of media on hate speech discussions on social media platforms

CRITICAL AI AND CRISIS INTERROGATIVES (continuing)

• Online user networks, community detection, activism during crisis and fake news spread during crisis. I utilize social network models to study online networks and apply NLP models to extract content for other tasks.

RECONSTRUCTING CRISIS NARRATIVES FOR TRUSTWORTHY COMMUNICATION AND COOPERATIVE AGENCY (continuing)

• Text analysis of THL’s Facebook and Twitter posts (including users’ comments) during COVID 19 pandemic, targeting organizational performance, crisis communication and trust based on Topic Modeling and text classification NLP models

STRENGTHENING PREPAREDNESS OF DRUG INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND DRUG POLICY CAPACITIES TO RESPOND TO EMERGING DRUG TRENDS AND CHALLENGES (DRUG-PREP)(continuing)

• EU Project with six countries
• Identify and assess current needs and responses to emerging drug problems in European countries
• Strengthen capacity building of national surveillance systems on preparedness
• Research is based on foresight analysis framework
• Training experts and decision-makers in EU countries via PLATO online training platform

THE CHALLENGES OF ESTABLISHING DRUG CONSUMPTION ROOMS (DCR) IN HELSINKI AND AN EVIDENCE-BASED POLICY DESIGN

• Qualitative research, based on inter-sectoral interviews
• Analysis of the policy environment, policy process and problematization of drug issue.

  CRISIS MANAGEMENT, TRUST AND LEGITIMACY IN EXTREME EVENTS: IMMIGRANT FLOWS

• Semi-structured face-to-face deep interviews with Syrian refugees, government officials and service providers.

WHOLESALE AND STREET-LEVEL DRUG PRICE DATA ACROSS TURKEY

• Created a national “Retail and Wholesale Drug Price” data collection system for Turkey
• Results are used for reporting to the agencies including the Turkish National Police, the EU drugs agency (EMCDDA) and The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB)

YOUTH SURVEYS IN ISTANBUL

• Conducted the largest youth survey in Turkey (on a sample of 32,000 students) about substance use, crime, violence, social and institutional settings.
• Continued with sub-surveys (10,000 students) annually in provinces of Istanbul through 2013

 

Linguistic skills

• Turkish: mother tongue
• English: Fluent
• Finnish: Intermediate level
• Arabic: Basic level

 

Statistics and Software Packages

• Programming language skills: Python, R, SQL , HTML (basics) and PHP (basics)
• NVivo – Qualitative Data Analysis Software
• SPSS – Statistical Package for the Social Sciences
• AMOS – Analysis of Moment Structures
• Mplus – Statistical modeling program
• STATA (basics) – General-purpose statistical software package

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Last Update: 29.09.2022