He made it through the difficult part: He graduated from both medical school and engineering faculty.

Muhammed Furkan Daşdelen, who ranked third in Turkey, fully won a scholarship to Istanbul Medipol University’s International School of Medicine. While continuing his medical studies, Daşdelen also pursued a Double Major Program in Computer Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences. Daşdelen aims to represent Turkey in the world by combining medicine and engineering through his future studies.

Although the university’s international medical faculty has been admitting students since 2014, the opportunity for students to participate in a double major program was granted in 2018. Having been placed in Istanbul Medipol University’s International School of Medicine as the third in Turkey in the Undergraduate Placement Exam in 2017, Muhammed Furkan Daşdelen also graduated from the Computer Engineering Program of the Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences with a Double Major in 2024. Daşdelen thus became one of the first graduates of the medical-computer double major.

Goal: To train research doctors who apply an engineering perspective in the field of medicine.

Daşdelen, who mentioned that they received preparatory education in Boston and then started medical education, stated, “The main purpose of this program is to train research doctors who apply an engineering perspective, vision, and knowledge in the field of medicine in Turkey. For this purpose, students are provided with the opportunity to take courses in various engineering fields, primarily biomedical, electrical electronics, and computer engineering. The university allows students to complete these courses in programs such as minor, double major, etc. Those interested in areas such as robotics, medical device development tend towards electrical, electronics, and biomedical, while those interested in software, data analysis, image processing, and artificial intelligence tend towards computer engineering.”

“I interned at the Cardiovascular Research Institute at the University of Cambridge”
Giving a brief overview of his education process, Daşdelen said, “In the last 2 years of engineering, I focused more on medical data processing, biostatistics, bioinformatics, artificial intelligence, and started to participate in such projects. With the internship scholarship provided by the university, I had the opportunity to intern in many parts of the world. The first one was at the Cardiovascular Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, where I worked on image processing in heart ultrasound and virus production for heart-specific gene modification using artificial intelligence. I conducted my second internship on artificial intelligence at the Munich Technical University. We developed and published a model on the diagnosis of diseases such as Leukemic infoma from the microscopic images using artificial intelligence. This year, I completed the last two internships at one of the universities with which our university has an agreement with America.”

“We are trying to make our names known in international journals”
Daşdelen continued his words as follows:
“Thanks to the internships, we were able to develop a network internationally. Furthermore, the internships we did at very prestigious universities also enabled us to access the knowledge there. Most importantly, by participating in highly effective studies here, we are trying to make our names known in international journals. My goal is to work on medicine and artificial intelligence. For this, God willing, I will start a doctorate in medicine and artificial intelligence at the Munich Technical University in September-October. I want to conduct my studies in this context.”

“We foresaw it as a university long ago”
Prof. Dr. Mehmet Kemal Özdemir, Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences at the university, stated, “Before starting this program, we consulted with leading figures in the field abroad. We agreed on the necessity of this program. There is already a constant need for innovations in medicine. Therefore, the merger of these two fields was very nice. As a university, we foresaw this long ago. Before artificial intelligence departments were opened in Turkey, we think that we were pioneers by directing our school towards this field in computer engineering and by offering this as a second field to medical students.”

“We have a system with 2,300 computer cores in our infrastructure”
“We have a system with 2,300 computer cores in our school’s infrastructure,” said Prof. Dr. Mehmet Kemal Özdemir, “In this way, we can run artificial intelligence algorithms effectively. Students who are among the top hundred in the university exam in Turkey come to our school. We have a computer infrastructure. We have expert professors in artificial intelligence. Within the framework of our foresight, we combined everything by foreseeing the application of artificial intelligence in medicine, and we graduated our first students this year. We have two graduates this year. We will increase this number every year.”

“We send 5 of our children abroad for internships every year”
Prof. Dr. Mehmet Kemal Özdemir continued his words as follows:
“The medical program starts to become intense in the third and fourth years. We try to start the Double Major Program early at this point. Especially, we make use of the summer. After raising the young people in this way, they applied for Amgen scholarships. Three of our students started to receive this from our school. Then the success of our children started to attract attention at universities such as ETH Zurich, Munich, and Cambridge. We have already signed a protocol agreement with ETH recently, and we send five of these students for summer internships every year. Currently, 5 of our students are doing internships. And this will continue in the following years. Because they have seen firsthand that a program that combines medicine with artificial intelligence or medicine with computer science is very advantageous, and that children raised from here can really conduct good research.”