Dilek Yargan is an interdisciplinary researcher with a background in mathematics, philosophy, applied ontology, and data science.
She earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Middle East Technical University (METU) in 2022 with a dissertation titled A Computational Ontological Model for Machine-Understandable Data in Artificial Intelligence, which explored the philosophical, mathematical, ontological, and computational foundations of machine-understandable data. She also holds an M.A. in Philosophy (2015), an M.S. in Secondary Science and Mathematics Education (2008), and a B.S. in Mathematics (2005), all from METU.
Currently, she is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Rostock, working on the DFG-funded project Learning from Nature: Epistemological and Ontological Foundations of Biomimetics. Her work focuses on analysing the foundational categories of biomimetics and formalising a core ontology grounded in these analyses.
In addition to her academic research, she has held industry roles as an ontologist, data scientist, and project lead, developing machine learning models and ontologies for use in legal tech, smart cities, and real estate.
Driven by the vision of a calculus ratiocinator, Dr. Yargan envisions the machine capable of understanding, reasoning, and explaining complex data.