Ismail Konak
My interest in AI started, in part, with Iron Man. I liked the idea of intelligent systems that could do things on their own. As I learned more, I became most interested in learning itself. How can a model learn from examples to solve a problem whose solution we cannot spell out step by step? I am especially drawn to the mathematics behind this learning, the representations models form, and their geometry. Today, I enjoy investigating what models learn and how they work as much as training them and building applications.
I speak Turkish, English, and French.
Explaining technical ideas
I have always enjoyed explaining things to other people. I learn better as I explain: trying to clarify a topic often makes the gaps in my own understanding visible. Andrej Karpathy had a big influence on my decision to make technical videos. I admired people who could explain their field to people outside it, and wanted to try it myself. I start by building intuition: helping an idea feel reasonable before moving to equations. Then I work through the mathematics and implementation. I understand a topic better when those three connect.
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Email: i_konak@hotmail.com
the timeline
2018 🎓 High school
International Murat Hüdavendigar, Bursa
Graduated with 96.29/100. Got hooked on AI here.
Jun 2021 🏆 2nd place, TÜBİTAK National High School Projects
TÜBİTAK
Category: image, sound and text recognition and processing.
Sep 2021 🏆 1st place, TEKNOFEST High School Competition
T3 Foundation
Technology for the Benefit of Humanity, Social Innovation.
2022 🎓 B.Sc. Computer Engineering starts
Sakarya University
Graduated with a 3.51 GPA. Early years: ML and DL fundamentals. Later: large language models.
Oct 2022 🫂 Member, KAÇUV
Hope Foundation for Children with Cancer
Volunteering, ongoing.
Mar 2023 🏆 Certificate of High Honor
Sakarya University
For academic performance.
Aug 2023 🫂 Chairman, SAÜ AI Society
Sakarya
Grew it into the faculty's largest society with 780+ members. 2nd place for most active social media use by a student club, 2024.
Jan 2024 🫂 Community Manager, Center for Intelligent Systems
Türkiye
Designed and taught a workshop: Programming the Transformer Architecture with PyTorch.
Oct 2024 🫂 Elected member, Student Senate
Sakarya University
One-year term.
Feb 2025 🎓 Exchange semester
Czech Technical University in Prague
B.Sc. Computer Science courses in Prague.
Aug 2025 💼 Intern, Albaraka Türk
Istanbul
Docker and Kubernetes: containerization, orchestration, deployment.
Aug 2025 💼 AI Engineer & Product Developer, Dekasis
Türkiye
Built and deployed an AI-powered legal workflow platform for law firms, working directly with real users.
Aug 2026 💼 Intern, Albaraka Türk
Istanbul
Application management and IT infrastructure: networking, monitoring, service operations.