Dr. Ozgur Ural

Dr. Ozgur Ural

Senior Software Engineer & Researcher; Ph.D. in Secure & Distributed ML

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A list of all the posts and pages found on the site. For you robots out there, there is an XML version available for digesting as well.

Pages

Posts

How to Recognize Advice That Actually Helps

3 minute read

Published:

Entrepreneurs, researchers, and engineers live in a torrent of guidance. Podcasts, newsletters, and mentors offer conflicting prescriptions, each delivered with confidence. Distinguishing signal from noise is therefore a crucial skill. The discipline of evidence‑based management argues that decisions should be grounded in the best available data rather than authority or habit (Pfeffer & Sutton, 2006). Applying this mindset to advice means scrutinizing both the source and the context before acting.

Slowing Down Time Through Novel Experiences

2 minute read

Published:

We often remark that years seem to fly by. Cognitive science suggests this feeling stems from how the brain encodes memories. When days look alike, the hippocampus compresses them into fewer distinct records, creating the impression that time has sped up\footnote{Avni-Babad, D., & Ritov, I. (2003). Routine and the perception of time. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 132(4), 543–553. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.132.4.543}. Conversely, a day rich with new experiences leaves more traces in neural storage, stretching our subjective timeline\footnote{Kurby, C.A., & Zacks, J.M. (2008). Segmentation in the perception and memory of events. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12(2), 72–79. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2007.11.004}.

The Real Test for Making Something People Want

3 minute read

Published:

Scaling conversations dominate startup culture, yet the first question any product must answer is painfully small: will even one person use it when given the chance? The only reliable way to find out is through direct observation. This principle is at the heart of evidence‑based design, a methodology grounded in human‑computer interaction research that emphasizes empirical feedback over speculation (Nielsen, 1993). Surveys and interviews hint at preferences, but behavior reveals intent. If your prototype cannot hold the attention of a single user, no amount of marketing will redeem it.

Why Startups Are Really About Curiosity

3 minute read

Published:

Founders often believe that success begins with a brilliant idea or a perfectly timed launch. Experience, however, shows that the most durable companies originate from a far less glamorous source: persistent curiosity. In innovation research, curiosity is not merely a personality trait but a mechanism for uncovering hidden structure in complex systems. Loewenstein’s review of the psychology of curiosity describes it as a response to information gaps that drive humans to seek missing data rather than settle for superficial explanations (Loewenstein, 1994). In a startup, those gaps manifest as unresolved annoyances—a workflow that feels clumsy, a user experience that wastes time, or a technology that seems inexplicably outdated. The founder who keeps tugging at these loose threads eventually reveals a problem worth solving.

The Myth of the Quick Fix

3 minute read

Published:

Every engineer knows the temptation of the “five-minute hack.” A bug appears, the schedule is tight, and a clever shortcut promises to save the day. Weeks later, the team is still wrestling with the fallout. The myth of the quick fix lies in its invisibility—short-term patches often masquerade as efficient solutions while secretly accruing interest that compounds over time.

Documentation as the First User Interface

3 minute read

Published:

Before a developer ever sees your landing page, they might encounter your README. For many technical products, documentation is the first user interface. It guides users through setup, communicates architecture decisions, and sets expectations for how the system behaves. Neglecting documentation is like shipping a GUI with missing buttons and unlabeled fields.

Hiring Generalists: The Startup’s Secret Weapon

3 minute read

Published:

Early-stage startups face a paradox: they need specialists to build complex products, but they also need people who can switch contexts rapidly as the company searches for product–market fit. Generalists thrive in this environment. They fill gaps no job description anticipated and create connective tissue between disciplines.

The Invisible Cost of Shiny Tools

3 minute read

Published:

Engineering teams love new tools. The promise of faster development, cleaner abstractions, or a more elegant stack is hard to resist. Yet every adoption decision carries hidden costs that rarely appear in procurement spreadsheets. The real price of a shiny tool lies in the cognitive load it introduces, the training it demands, and the fragile glue it creates between systems.

METU Sailing Team: Racing in Urla, Bodrum, and Marmaris

1 minute read

Published:

Middle East Technical University’s sailing club has long been a hub for students who love the sea. I was lucky to sail with the club when I was a student at METU, spending weekends trimming sails on the Aegean and getting hooked on the rhythm of race starts.

Why Early Beta Feedback Matters More Than Launch Day

3 minute read

Published:

Product launches often steal the spotlight, but the feedback gathered during early beta testing quietly determines whether launch day is a victory lap or a scramble to patch obvious gaps. Treating beta periods as a checkbox diminishes their power; when leveraged well, beta feedback drives the evolution of features, design, and infrastructure before they congeal into something hard to change.

Y Combinator and DNA: Fixed Points in Code and Biology

1 minute read

Published:

In lambda calculus, introduced by Alonzo Church, the Y combinator is a higher-order function that finds the fixed point of other functions, allowing recursion in a system that lacks native self-reference. By applying Y to a function, the system generates an instance that calls itself, enabling algorithms like factorial or Fibonacci to emerge from purely functional constructs. Tutorials such as the Haskell Wiki on fixed-point combinators and M. Vanier’s “Y Combinator (no, not that one)” provide step-by-step explanations.

Proof of Learning: Building Trust in Future Machine Learning

1 minute read

Published:

Proof of Learning (PoL) verifies that a model was genuinely trained on claimed data by providing verifiable evidence of the training process. As machine learning systems become pervasive in critical domains, PoL offers a mechanism to ensure trust and accountability in model provenance.

Model Watermarking and the Future of Trustworthy AI

1 minute read

Published:

Model watermarking embeds identifiable patterns into a model’s parameters or outputs so that ownership can be demonstrated without access to the original training process. Early work showed that weights of deep networks can carry hidden signatures without affecting accuracy [3]. Subsequent methods trained models on trigger sets to create behavior-based marks resilient to fine‑tuning [4,5].

ML-Enhanced Blockchain: Toward Intelligent, Adaptive Ledgers

2 minute read

Published:

Machine learning (ML) is increasingly used to make blockchain networks more secure, efficient, and user-friendly. In our survey on blockchain-enhanced machine learning [1], we explored how blockchains can bolster ML pipelines. This post examines the converse: how ML techniques are improving blockchains themselves.

Exploring METU Computer Engineering and the Devrim Stage

1 minute read

Published:

Middle East Technical University (METU) is a public research university in Ankara, Turkey, known for its emphasis on engineering, natural sciences, and social sciences [1]. Established in 1956, the university now offers 41 undergraduate programs across five faculties and hosts a large forested campus around Lake Eymir.

Blockchain Oracles and Smart Contracts: The World’s Agile Board

3 minute read

Published:

Traditional agile boards depend on centralized tools and manual updates. As projects span multiple organizations and trust boundaries, these boards struggle to provide real-time, trustworthy visibility. Blockchain oracles and smart contracts offer a path to an autonomous, tamper-evident coordination layer that could serve as the world’s agile board.

Blockchain-Enhanced Machine Learning: Linking Trust, Data, and Incentives

3 minute read

Published:

Blockchain technology and machine learning (ML) have traditionally evolved on parallel tracks. However, recent research shows that their convergence promises transparent, trustworthy, and decentralized intelligent systems. In our survey on blockchain-enhanced machine learning [1], we examine how the decentralized design of blockchain can address systemic challenges in ML and pave the way for collaborative, verifiable artificial intelligence.

Avion Level D FFS and Their Future Importance

1 minute read

Published:

Level D full flight simulators (FFS) represent the highest standard of flight training devices, capable of replicating every nuance of modern aircraft. At Avion, I had the opportunity to work on the development of a Level D FFS project for about two years, helping bring cockpit dynamics, flight models, and instructor tools into perfect alignment with real‑world operations.

Autonomous Drones and Their Future Importance

less than 1 minute read

Published:

Previously, I worked for about two years on a project developing autonomous drone systems, focusing on platforms such as Kargu and Togan. These systems illustrate how rapidly unmanned technologies are advancing and why they will play a critical role in future security and civilian applications.

portfolio

publications

Autonomous Cargo and Mail Delivery

Published in Turkish Autonomous Robots Conference, 2014

Turkish Autonomous Robots Conference, Ankara, Turkey, 2014.

Recommended citation: Ural, Ozgur (2014). Autonomous Cargo and Mail Delivery. Turkish Autonomous Robots Conference, Ankara, Turkey.
Download Paper

talks

teaching

Teaching experience 1

Undergraduate course, University 1, Department, 2014

This is a description of a teaching experience. You can use markdown like any other post.

Teaching experience 2

Workshop, University 1, Department, 2015

This is a description of a teaching experience. You can use markdown like any other post.