Oguzhan Topsakal

Assistant Professor - 9
Dr. Oguzhan Topsakal

Phone 863-874-8809

Location Main Campus

Office BARC-1188

Directory Computer Science

Dr. Oguzhan Topsakal came to Florida Poly in 2018 with a wide range of teaching, research, and industry experience. In addition to more than 15 years of experience developing software in industry, he has taught and developed several computer science courses. Topsakal enjoys sharing his experiences with concrete examples to facilitate learning. He is an advocate of an interactive teaching style that welcomes student's active participation. He is very experienced in teaching algorithm design and analysis at both undergraduate and graduate level. His interest in teaching includes machine learning as well. His experience in developing iOS and Android apps for more than 10 years helps him deliver the essential concepts in mobile app development using a project-based teaching style. He has also taught courses covering programming languages such as Java and C++. His teaching experience also includes developing and delivering a 'virtual patient' course for medical school students that helped them to create virtual patients to simulate the interactions between doctors and patients having specific illnesses.

Topsakal's current research interests include applications of machine learning, augmented reality, and optimization to discover novel approaches for solving problems in the field of medicine and education. He is currently focusing on rhinoplasty surgery, one of the most common and challenging plastic surgery procedures.

While earning his doctoral degree at the University of Florida, Topsakal worked on NSF funded projects focusing on finding innovative methodologies for data integration.

He was an assistant professor in the Department of Management Information Systems and the Department of Computer Engineering at Uludag University in Turkey from 2015-16. During that time, he was the recipient of two project grants in the field of augmented reality from TUBITAK (Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey). One of the projects aimed to utilize augmented reality for improving the service quality of medical surgeries, and the other project focused on using augmented reality to teach foreign language for preschool children. At Uludag University, he was also the advisor for the Technology Transfer Office for boosting Entrepreneurship in the community.

During fall 2016, he was a visiting assistant professor in the Virtual Experiences Research Group Lab at the University of Florida.

In addition to his academic experience, Topsakal gained extensive experience in the software industry, working at the IT departments of corporations and at fast-paced startups. He has been involved in developing and managing many software projects and products. Topsakal also has entrepreneurship experience as the co-founder of two startups.

  • Entrepreneurship Grant on Application of Augmented Reality in Education, Turkish Council of Research, 2016
  • Research Grant on Applications of Augmented Reality in Medicine, Turkish Council of Research, 2015
  • Second Place Award on Mobile Application Development Contest, Motorola at the University of Florida, 2002
  • Assistantship Offer, University of Florida, 2001
  • Scholarship to Pursue Graduate Degree in the USA, Ministry of Education of Turkey, 2001
  • Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Florida, 2007
  • M.S. in Computer Engineering, University of Florida, 2003
  • B.S. in Computer Engineering, Istanbul Technical University, 1996
  • Software engineering
  • Databases
  • Mobile app development
  • Augmented reality
  • Scientific Program Committee, 7th International Conference on Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Computer Graphics (SALENTO AVR 2020)
  • Reviewer for MICCAI (The Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention Society) (2019, 2020)
  • Topsakal O, Akbas MI, Smith B, Perez M, Celikoyar MM. (2020). Digitizing rhinoplasty: A web application for three-dimensional preoperative planning. CARS 2020, 34th International Congress on Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery.
  • Celikoyar MM, Perez MF, Akbas MI, Topsakal O. (2020). Facial feature points & measurements: A review and update on the current since Farkas with an emphasis on rhinoplasty. Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. In Submission.
  • Topsakal O, Çelikoyar MM. (2019) Surgeries that would Benefit from Augmented Reality. In the Proceedings of 6th International Conference on Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Computer Graphics.
  • Çelikoyar MM, Topsakal O, Gürbüz S (2019) Mobile technology for recording surgical procedures, Journal of Visual Communication in Medicine
  • E Topsakal, O Topsakal, (2019) Augmented Reality to Engage Preschool Children in Foreign Language Learning, In the Proceedings of 6th International Conference on Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Computer Graphics.