Abdullah Atalar was born in 1954 in Gaziantep. He received B.S. degree from Middle East
Technical University in 1974, MS and PhD degrees from Stanford University in 1976 and
1978 all in Electrical Engineering. He worked as a Research Associate in Stanford University
on acoustic microscopy and as a Research Scientist on photoacoustics in Hewlett Packard
Labs until 1980. He returned home as an Assistant Professor in the Middle East Technical
University. He gave the first Microprocessors course in Turkey. In 1982 he lead a team of
engineers of Ernst Leitz Wetzlar of Germany to develop the acoustic microscope as a
commercial instrument. In 1986 he joined the newly established Bilkent University as the
Department Chair of Electrical Engineering Department where he had the Associate Professor
position. His students designed the first full-custom VLSI chip of Turkey using UNIX
workstations in 1987. He was promoted to Professor position in 1990. With the support of a
NATO sponsored project his team designed the first microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) of
Turkey in 1992. He worked as a Visiting Professor in Stanford University in 1996. He
received the Scientific Encouragement and Science Awards of TUBITAK in 1982 and in
1994. He was elected a full-member of Turkish Academy of Sciences in 1997 and became a
Fellow of IEEE in 2007. He has 15 international and national patents, 92 journal papers and
114 conference proceedings. The citations to his works are more than 5000. He led R&D
projects for companies like ASELSAN, Teletaş and Hitachi. Currently, he is the Rector of
Bilkent University. His current research interests are in the fields of microwave electronics,
micromachined transducers and sensors.