Father-Figure of the Turkish Students in Boston

It is a centre of academia and many students prefer to study there. Northeastern University (NU) is one of the respected universities of Boston.

Dr. Yaman Yener is Associate Dean of Engineering in charge of Research and Graduate Studies and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Northeastern University for 14 years and he is known as a father-figure to Turkish students in Boston.  The number of Turkish students at Northeastern University is about 150, the fourth largest international student population at this institution.  

Northeastern’s College of Engineering is now the only institution in the nation that houses one NASA- and two NSF-Funded research centers within the same college. Dr. Yener helped secure a $16.2 million grant to establish a new National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center at Northeastern University.  The Center for Subsurface Sensing and Imaging Systems (CenSSIS) was one of only two such facilities in the country funded by NSF in 2000.  

Dr. Yener also played a key role in the establishment of another National Science Foundation funded center – The Center for High-Rate Nanomanufacturing. This was one of the six NSF Nanoscale Science and Engineering Centers established nationwide in 2004.

A substantial increase in scholarly publications by the College’s faculty also affirms Dr. Yener’s leadership in solidifying the College’s research position.  Over the last ten years, the number of archival journal publications authored by the Engineering College’s faculty members and their contributions to national and international scientific and technical conference proceedings has risen more than 100 per cent.  

Dr. Yener regularly coordinates visits by key people from various funding agencies for meetings with faculty members and researchers. Dr. Yener also coordinates College of Engineering faculty team visits to funding agencies in Washington, D.C. at least once every year.  Eight years ago, he initiated and now chairs a committee for the College of Engineering Research Award to honor two faculty members/researchers every year for their meritorious research contribution.

Dr. Yener is particularly credited for attracting top-quality Turkish graduate students to Northeastern University.  Recently, he took the initiative to develop a number of collaborations between Northeastern University and Turkish universities, including, among others, the Middle East Technical University, Hacettepe University, TOBB Economics and Technology University, and Sabanci University.

During the  2003-2004 academic year, the Engineering College’s faculty and researchers attracted over $23 million in external funding to support their research and scholarly activities.  This represents a steady increase of about three-fold over the period of Dr. Yener’s tenure as Associate Dean.

In addition to coordinating the efforts of individual faculty and groups of faculty, Dr. Yener played a pivotal role in the establishment of the Center for Advanced Microgravity Materials Processing (CAMMP) at Northeastern University in 1997.  CAMMP is one of only 10 NASA centers under the Space Product Division at major universities nationwide and the only one exclusively focused on materials science. Its mission is to stimulate innovations in materials technology and to develop commercial products through knowledge gained from ground-based and, where appropriate, microgravity research.

OVER 70 TECHINAL AND RESEARCH PAPERS
In 1997, Dr. Yener established the Engineering College’s Industrial Liaison Program to foster and maintain customized, responsive, long-term relationships between the College and Industry to stimulate collaborative research activities. 

As Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Dr. Yener maintains his own research program in the field of heat transfer. He has published over 70 technical and research papers, co-authored two graduate-level books, Heat Conduction, Taylor and Francis, 1993 and Convective Heat Transfer, CRC Press, 1995, and edited three conference proceedings. 

In recognition of his contributions to the field mechanical engineering, in 2000, Dr. Yener was elected a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineering.  Since 2003, he has been one of the six elected Board Members of the Engineering Research Council of the American Society for Engineering Education.  

ACADEMIC CAREER FOR OVER 30 YEARS
Dr Yener received his BS and MS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the Middle East Technical University (METU), in Ankara, Turkey in 1968 and 1970, and his Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1973 from North Carolina State University, at Raleigh. 

He was a member of the METU faculty from 1974 to 1980.  He served as the Chairman of the Mechanical Engineering Department at METU between 1978 and 1980.  He taught as a Visiting Professor at the University of Delaware from 1980 to 1982.  He subsequently joined Northeastern University in 1982.  He was Chairman of the Mechanical Engineering Department from July 1989 through December 1990.

Since 1993, he has directed the research efforts of the faculty and researchers of the College of Engineering with a comprehensive and focused agenda to accomplish Northeastern University’s mission of gaining recognition as a national research institution. Dr. Yener is married to Demet Yener.  Dr. Yener and his wife Demet have one daughter – Zeynep. (October 2006, September 11 Special Issue/ 22nd)