Ahmet Öztaş
Rector, Epoka University
He graduated first from Mathematics department of İnönü University, Malatya/Turkey and then from Civil Engineering Department of Istanbul Technical University (ITU), Istanbul/Tukey. He has MSc. in Construction Management from Istanbul University and has Ph.D. from University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), Manchester/U.K. in 1995. His PhD title was “The Mitigation of the Effects of Delays in Construction Projects – A Knowledge Based System Approach”.
He has joined to Gaziantep University, Gaziantep/Turkey as a Research Assistant at 1988. He has got a PhD. scholarship from Turkish Higher Education Council (YOK). After completing PhD study in U.K., he has continued to work in Gaziantep university as lecturer in Civil Engineering Department at the University of Gaziantep from 1995 to 2012. While he is lecturing in civil engineering department, he has involved in administrative duties as well. He became the Director of Kilis Vocational High School of Gaziantep University from 1999 to 2004. He was also the coordinator of Turkish Student Examination and Replacement Center (OSYM) for Kilis City from 1999 to 2004.
Apart from academic works, he has involved in implementing “Quality Assurance System (KGS)” in the Ready Mixed Concrete (RMC) plants as concrete quality chief inspector in the Southeast Region of Turkey, working for Turkish Ready-Mixed Concrete Association (THBB) from 1997 to 2008. During this period, he has supervised 25 plants in 9 cities to establish the KGS.
He has involved several national and international projects as researcher and project leader. Apart from other projects, he has also worked on EUROCODE project at Joint Research Centre (JRC) of European Commission (EU) in Italy as a visiting fellow researcher from April 2006 to October 2007.
Another research project involved as project leader was “Predicting the Compressive Strength and Slump of High-Performance Concrete using Artificial Neural Networks”, TÜBİTAK
(Turkish Scientific and Technical Research Council) Project between 2003-2005.
He has published more than 80 journal and conference papers and supervised many MSc and PhD students in different universities/Countries in Gaziantep/Turkey, Erbil/Iraq and Tirana/Albania.
He has served as the dean of Engineering and Architecture Faculty of Epoka University in Tirana/Albania for 4 years from 2008 to 2012. He works as the president of Ishik University in Erbil and Suleimani of Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRG) for 5 years from 2012 to 2017 and as Director of International Relations office for 4 years from 2017 to 2021. Since September 2021, he is the Rector of Epoka university in Tirana/Albania.
He is a member of GEDC since 2010 and elected and served as Secretary treasury of GEDC for one year in 2016. He has been also selected as “FEATURED DEAN” by GEDC Executive committee in 2017. He has been elected as Executive committee Member by GEDC members in 2022 for 3 years.
He is also an active member of European University Association (EUA) and serving as a member of “Standing Membership Committee” since September 2022.