Hello

I’m Hakan

Brief History

My adult history began when I came to the United States to study Aerospace Engineering as a freshman at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. After graduation, I got my dream job and worked on a project for NASA as a subcontractor to develop a graphical user interface for one of their mission planning and scheduling systems. My next endeavors at US Steel and at Southern Progress Corporation (subsidiary of Time Inc.) finally lead me to move to the Washington DC area and start my own company in 2002. San Francisco became home in 2010 and I am currently evaluating work and living from more diverse and international locations involving San Francisco, Tokyo, Amsterdam and London.

Current Work

Benchmark Rings

It all began with collaborating with a friend on a small project involving target marketing and capturing information a database system. That friend, who is now the president of Benchmark Rings, has asked me to develop an end-to-end system for their manufacturing operations and we have been developing and implementing systems for Benchmark for the last 18 plus years. I am currently the Software Engineer, Systems Architect, and de facto CTO for Benchmark.

Interests

Running

My interest for running started while I was in Washington DC and my 5K runs immediately turned into Half Marathons when I moved to San Francisco. I ran my first Full Marathon in July 2019 and have committed to run the San Francisco Marathon in 2020.

Natural Language Understanding, Image Processing, and Deep Learning

As part of my continuing education and following the technology trends, I got my Data Science Certificate Degree from UC Berkeley Extension 2018 and I am currently working on completing my Certificate in Artificial Intelligence from Stanford University.