[Nomination] Efe Kaan Güler #133
Description
Select one:
- I am nominating myself for the PyTorch Ambassador Program.
- I am nominating someone else to become a PyTorch Ambassador.
Please confirm that the nominee meets the following requirements:
- The nominee is 18 years of age or older.
- The nominee agrees to abide by the PyTorch Code of Conduct.
- The nominee agrees to comply with the Linux Foundation Antitrust Policy.
- The nominee meets at least one of the qualifications listed in the PyTorch Ambassador Program Requirements.
Nominee Name
Efe Kaan Güler
Nominee Email
Nominee's GitHub or GitLab Handle
efekaanguler
(Optional) Organization / Affiliation
Google Developer Groups on Campus - Middle East Technical University
City, State/Province, Country
Ankara, Turkiye
Your Name
No response
Your Email (Optional)
No response
How has the nominee contributed to PyTorch?
- An active contributor to PyTorch repositories (e.g., commits, PRs, discussions).
- A speaker at PyTorch events or workshops.
- A PyTorch user group organizer or meetup host.
- A researcher or educator using PyTorch in academic work or training.
- An active leader in the PyTorch community with at least one year of experience in:
- Organizing events (virtual/in-person).
- Speaking at AI/ML conferences.
- Mentoring others in PyTorch.
- Creating technical content (e.g., blogs, videos, tutorials).
🏆 How Would the Nominee Contribute as an Ambassador?
As the President of the Google Developer Groups on Campus (GDGC) at Middle East Technical University (METU), I am currently leading one of the most active and technically capable student communities in Turkey. METU is widely recognized as the country’s top engineering university, and our community runs the largest AI education and project series in the institution.
In the past year, I designed and led a 7-week Deep Learning training program that certified 122 students. The entire series was designed to be beginner-friendly yet technically rigorous. I now plan to evolve this program into a PyTorch-centered curriculum—where students not only learn deep learning concepts but also develop real-world projects using PyTorch. This updated curriculum will target even more students across multiple universities, and will emphasize reproducibility, open source collaboration, and community contribution. All educational content, including lecture slides, coding notebooks, and assignments, is prepared in English to ensure accessibility beyond local boundaries and allow scaling internationally.
In addition to educational efforts, I am directly involved in PyTorch-based research and applied AI projects. At ROMER (the Center for Robotics and Artificial Intelligence at METU), I work as an undergraduate researcher, developing transformation-invariant encoders for point cloud data using PyTorch and PyTorch3D. Our focus is on creating robust representations for 3D data that can resist geometric transformations and noise, contributing to the academic understanding and real-world application of neural representations.
Furthermore, as part of my student community and personal projects, I have led or contributed to several applied AI initiatives, including:
1- Hector-Metubot: A campus-wide chatbot using RAG.
2 - Alaz: A full-stack autonomous driving system that uses advanced AI based algorithms that maps the road and the environment and plans routes securely like humans, both trained and evaluated in PyTorch.
3 - Baksi: A medical imaging project focused on stroke detection and neurological damage analysis from brain scans, also developed using PyTorch.
Looking forward, my contributions as a PyTorch Ambassador will include:
1- Hosting regular workshops, both in-person and online, on PyTorch fundamentals and advanced use cases, at METU and other universities in Turkey using PyTorch Ambassador title.
2 - Creating a mentorship pipeline from beginner students to project leaders, ensuring long-term sustainability and community growth.
3 - Collaborating with GDG communities across Turkey to replicate and expand training programs using PyTorch.
4 - Publishing educational content and project documentation on GitHub, YouTube and LinkedIn to maximize reach and open participation.
5 - Building a PyTorch learning ecosystem in Turkey that not only educates but also drives innovation through local projects and applied research.
With the Ambassador title, I would gain access to resources and recognition that would significantly boost the reach and impact of these initiatives. I would also be able to represent PyTorch officially in community interactions, thereby improving participation, trust, and visibility. My long-term goal is to establish a new wave of ML engineers in Turkey who use PyTorch not only as learners but also as contributors and creators in the field of machine learning.Any additional details you'd like to share?
I am currently working as an undergraduate researcher at ROMER – METU’s Center for Robotics and AI, focusing on point cloud representation learning using PyTorch and PyTorch3D. My work explores how to create rotation- and transformation-invariant embeddings for 3D geometry data, contributing to both academic and applied AI domains.
As GDGC METU President, I lead a community of over 200 students trained in deep learning, with 30+ currently active contributors in various AI projects, all of which utilize PyTorch. These include:
1 - Alaz (Autonomous Driving Software): Involving object detection, semantic segmentation, and control systems.
2 - Hector-Metubot (AI Chatbot): A large-scale NLP system for campus services.
3 - Baksi (Medical Imaging AI): Designed to identify early signs of stroke using CNN-based image classification.
All materials, including lecture notes, code notebooks, and hands-on projects, are prepared in English and are designed to be open, shareable, and modular—ready for use in other communities and universities. This choice not only supports local scaling but also paves the way for international reuse and collaboration.
I am already training and mentoring junior students to take leadership roles in the community, with the goal of establishing an internal sustainability loop. Some of the most promising students from our first training cohort are now leading their own sub-projects and mentoring others.
In the upcoming year, I plan to launch:
1 - A full-fledged PyTorch learning track open to students from all universities in Turkey.
2 - A YouTube playlist of tutorials derived from our workshops and courses.
3 - Cross-university collaborations using the GDG network, to promote PyTorch as the go-to framework for student projects and research in Turkey.
All updates and events will be actively shared through Github, LinkedIn, YouTube, and developer platforms to maximize reach. The community is already growing organically, and with the support and credibility of the PyTorch Foundation, it will expand even faster.
My broader goal is to build a PyTorch-powered innovation ecosystem in Turkey—one that not only teaches, but also builds, contributes, and inspires. As an ambassador, I can serve as both a representative and a facilitator of this ecosystem, ensuring that PyTorch becomes the core framework for the next generation of ML creators in the region.