During the day-long parallel sessions at MATLAB EXPO organized by Mathworks and its representative Figes in Turkey, the simulations for the MATLAB and SIMULINK solutions, user stories and industrial trends were shared with participants.

In his opening remark, FIGES Chairman of the Executive Board Dr. Tarik ÖĞÜT stated that they have been organizing this type of event for over 25 years but that presently our country needs events requiring more competence and added: “We are actualizing MATLAB EXPO for the first time in Turkey. Today, we will be sharing critical issues with you here. I attach great importance to your presence here in terms of getting to know each other regarding the network and developing the cooperation culture together. Turkey covered a great distance in R&D area within 15 years from 2002 to 2017. In 2003, merely 25% of the equipment utilized by our armed forces was manufactured indigenously. Today this rate increased to 62% as of the end of 2017. We wish to elevate this to 80% - 85% in 2023. How will we achieve this? With the participation of you, this society will be elevating these figures to the desired levels. Lately, we are talking about the financial crisis. Crises are highly pragmatic. Because we only take lessons when bad things happen, the governments are likewise. Why is there a crisis, how did this current deficit occur? We have a limited number of products with added value, and this is not sufficient. You will be the one to solve this issue. The solution for our problems is always through science and technology.”

Stating that Turkey’s R&D expenditure ratio to GDP was around 1%, Dr. ÖĞÜT added that this ratio was around 3% in developed countries and that we needed to approach this level. Dr. ÖĞÜT: “How will we achieve this? What we call R&D is software, hardware, various equipment but the ones operating them are human beings. We are capable of buying all equipment with money, but we cannot buy human resources. We search for qualified staff yet failed to find them. Hundreds, thousands of engineers are required merely in the projects presently being executed by Turkish Aerospace. How will we find these people? As FIGES, we endeavor to fulfill our responsibilities, we are working on software and training R&D engineers in this software. We elevated this to a more professional level and established the BuildUp Academy. We train about 20 engineers in 3 months. We gather new graduates; teach them the new numeric methods and R&D culture. We train them in three months in order to accelerate their adaptation to the companies that they will be assigned to. When they reach the required level, they will be able to be much more effective when they start working at Aselsan, Turkish Aerospace and Roketsan. We aim to minimize the orientation period of the new engineers at major companies. We aim to reduce this period as much as possible from 12 months to 2 months, because neither our colleagues nor our companies have any time to lose. Our youth will have to be effective and efficient in the projects they are assigned to as they start working in major companies.”

Noting that FIGES has been publishing an R&D magazine for four years Dr. ÖĞÜT added, “We are publishing this magazine once every four months and distribute it across Turkey free of charge. Please send your technical articles, articles on application to our magazine so that the valuable projects you have been conducting could be shared with other R&D employees around Turkey. In this way the R&D culture in Turkey can be extended.”

MathWorks Shared Sales and Services Director Richard HAXBY noted that the MATLAB EXPO events were quite essential for their customers and added that 800 participants attended the MATLAB EXPO held in the United Kingdom in 2014 and the number of the participants of the event in 2018 exceed 2,000 participants.

Following the opening remarks, during the afternoon session, speakers attending on behalf of Aselsan, Turkish Aerospace, FIGES, AVL Turkey and MathWorks made various presentations in the sessions conducted under the titles of Artificial Intelligence, Model-Based Design, ASIC&FPGA Design and Communication.