Computer Scientist, Computational Biologist, Assoc. Prof. at Bilkent University @BilkentUniv & Adj. Faculty at @CarnegieMellon @CMUCompbio 🦋@crashius
Joined July 2011
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Ercument Cicek retweeted
If every problem in your lab needs you, how will your team grow?
In my book draft, I wrote: “One of my most important jobs is to train people to solve problems.”
This is a difficult transition for a new PI. You know how to do the experiment, fix the analysis, or rewrite the paragraph. Doing it yourself feels faster. But if that becomes the routine, people keep waiting for your answer.
Give someone ownership of a problem. Ask what they have tried, what they think is happening, and what they would do next. Discuss their reasoning. Agree on when to check back and when they should ask for help.
Then give them room to try. Including room to choose a good approach that is different from yours.
For PhD students and postdocs, these are opportunities to practice leading a project. For PIs, this is how we develop the next generation of leaders.
It takes patience now. It gives the whole team more capacity later.
What has helped you give your team more independence?
#Academic #Leadership #Mentorship #PhDLife #Postdoc
Ercument Cicek retweeted
🚀 34 innovative projects, demos, awards, food, and fun! #CSFair2026
Held on May 8 at the Bilkent Hotel, CS Fair of the Computer Engineering Department brought together students, faculty, industry leaders, and proud families for a day full of innovation and fun🎉
Ercument Cicek retweeted
📢 CS Fair 2026 is coming!
Join us on May 8, 2026 (Friday) at Bilkent Hotel, Sakarya Hall for an exciting showcase of innovation 🎓Our senior students will present 34 graduation projects from Senior Design Projects, featuring live demos, project & personal awards 🚀
Ercument Cicek retweeted
ExactCN: Predicting Exact Copy Numbers on Whole Exome Sequencing Data biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
Ercument Cicek retweeted
CHALLENGER: Detecting Copy Number Variants in Challenging Regions Using Whole Genome Sequencing Data biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
Ercument Cicek retweeted
#RECOMB2026 will be in Thessaloniki, Greece on May 26-29, 2026. Satellites on May 24-25. Save the date!
Το συνέδριο #RECOMB2026 θα πραγματοποιηθεί στη Θεσσαλονίκη, στις 26-29 Μαΐου 2026. Οι δορυφορικές εκδηλώσεις θα διεξαχθούν στις 24-25 Μαΐου 2026. Σημειώστε την ημερομηνία!
Ercument Cicek retweeted
'About your cat, Mr. Schrödinger — I have good news and bad news.'
(Benjamin Schwartz, New Yorker)
Ercument Cicek retweeted
UTRGAN: Learning to Generate 5’ UTR Sequences for Optimized Translation Efficiency and Gene Expression. #5UTRs #TranslationalControl #TranslationOptimization #GeneExpression #Genomics #Bioinformatics @BioinfoAdv
academic.oup.com/bioinformat…
Ercument Cicek retweeted
Yann LeCun is not so optimistic about LLMs. 😟
"We are not going to get to human level AI by just scaling up MLMs. This is just not going to happen. There's no way. Okay, absolutely no way. And whatever you can hear from some of my uh more adventurous colleagues, it's not going to happen within the next two years.
There's absolutely no way in hell. You know the idea that we're we're going to have you know a country of genius in a data center that's complete BS. There's absolutely no way what we're going to have maybe is systems that are trained on sufficiently large amounts of data that any question that any reasonable person may ask will will find an answer through those systems and it would feel like you have a PhD sitting next to you but it's not a PhD you have next to you.
It's system with a gigantic memory and retrieval ability not not a system that can invent solutions to to new problems, which is really what a PhD is. "
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From "Alex Kantrowitz" YT Channel (full video link in comment)
Ercument Cicek retweeted
All researchers should fight against this. Every week I try to persuade my students that top papers often have few quantitative results. With work that's new, important, and clearly qualitatively different (zero to one!), you don't need quantitative results. Demos not tables!
Ercument Cicek retweeted
It was a joint work with Atilla Akkus, @aghdam_masoud, Mingjie Li, Junjie Chu, Michael Backes, @realyangzhang. We are excited to present this work in Seattle — hope to see many of you there! ✈️📍
Ercument Cicek retweeted
🚨 Exciting news! Our paper "Generated Data with Fake Privacy: Hidden Dangers of Fine-tuning Large Language Models on Generated Data" was accepted to USENIX Security '25 🎉🎉🎉
usenix.org/conference/usenix…
Ercument Cicek retweeted
📢 New preprint. One-Hot News: Drug Synergy Models Take a Shortcut biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
Ercument Cicek retweeted
After careful consideration and hearing the feedback from our fans whilst fully respecting their concerns, our show in Istanbul will be now postponed until 2026 so we can ensure DBL Entertainment will not be involved.
Thank you for your ongoing support, it means everything to us. See you in 2026!
Ercument Cicek retweeted
Hepimizin haklarını savundukları için bu bayramı hapiste geçiren öğrencilerimizi unutmayacağız. Onları en kısa zamanda özgürlüklerine kavuşturmak dileğiyle. Hepsine iyi bayramlar!
Ercument Cicek retweeted
The Turkish opposition's frontrunner and scores of politicians from the main opposition party were detained this morning. This is a coup against the main opposition party, with far-reaching consequences for Turkey’s political regime. Since the country’s transition to democratic rule in 1950, we have never witnessed such an authoritarian turn under a civilian government. This decision makes a mockery of the electoral process and pushes Turkey further down the path of autocracy like Venezuela, Russia, and Belarus. If the opposition actors cannot reverse this trend, it would be difficult to contemplate government turnover through the ballotbox after this point.
Erdoğan’s main rival detained by Turkish police on.ft.com/3FB2Dpv
Ercument Cicek retweeted
Nihayet beklenen kavuşma gerçekleşti. Yaren Leylek 14. yılında da varım dedi. Dün göçten gelip önce yuvasına konup eşiyle özlem giderdi ve bu sabahta soluğu Adem Amca'nın kayığında aldı. Adem Amca ise onu böyle ayakta karşıladı.
Hoşgeldin #YarenLeylek
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