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Things I have done that I am proud of

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Things I am proud of that I can remember, not in the order of importance

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  • Raising my two children in a good way, being a good father

  • Being a good son to my Mom and Dad

  • Having an exceptionally close relationship with my American family

  • Having about 30 Best Friends Forever (BFF) whom I have an exceptionally close relationship

  • Getting BS from METU and MS/PhD from Caltech - scholarships and fellowships and loans all the time, not a dime from anyone including parents

  • Hubble Space Telescope Infrared Detector Program win and successful insertion - twice. also the visible detector electronics

  • James Webb Space Telescope Program win and Infrared detector development and delivery, the best infrared detectors ever

  • Delivering the infrared detectors for the highly successful Pluto flyby mission

  • Delivering the infrared detectors that first found water on Mars

  • All infrared observatories around the world presently have infrared detectors developed by my organization

  • Almost all future infrared missions and observatories under construction (very large telescopes) have planned in detectors originally developed by my group

  • Almost all present infrared missions for space are using detectors developed by my organization

  • Finding a wallet in Frankfurt airport, full of $, give to police

  • Finding a wallet in a taxi going to the European Space Agency (ESA), full of $, give to authorities

  • Saving a traffic accident victims life, taking to hospital while bleeding (with my good friend Resit Unal), he recovered completely and looked for me after I had left for the USA, brought presents

  • Taking a research organization in a research environment from $5M in sales to about $100M in sales and presently it is a $500M organization (things became better for some reason after I left) - a lot of acquisitions

  • Building an organization of exceptional talents in the world of infrared detectors, CMOS, electronics and having a very, very low rate of attrition

  • Visiting my mother in Turkey regularly with the kids even though other side of world

  • Thank you letters from the President of Night Vision Labs, DARPA, Sandia Labs, NASA Administrator, DoD, other US government agencies

  • Having a hand in winning the Cold War

  • Ankara Tennis Junior Champion

  • Thousand Oaks Basketball D-league (cannot jump, dribble or shoot) Champions

  • Ankara College Table Tennis Champion

  • TUBITAK scholarship

  • Classical Guitar Concert at Ankara Concert Hall with group

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