Şekip Karakaya, Chairman of the Board of SAMPAŞ Holding; He was born in Adana in 1953. He completed his primary, secondary and high school education in Adana. At the age of 13, he ran his father's open-air cinema for 10 years.

He graduated from Ankara University, Faculty of Political Sciences, Department of Economics and Finance in 1974. In 1975-1976, he did a postgraduate study at the Institute of Business Economics. He started his professional career in organizations within the body of Sabancı Holding.

In 1981, he founded Sampaş Bilişim ve İletişim Sistemleri AŞ. When “IBM” was almost the only know brand for computers, Sampaş provided software solutions on top of various hardware solutions in Turkey, as well as training, service and support activities with the aim of customer satisfaction. Starting with the late President Turgut Özal, he perceived the concept of "Entrepreneurship, IT and Localization". He took SAMPAŞ out of business in all other sectors and structured the company to focus only on the "Local Administrations" sector in Turkey.

Between 1984-1994, he personally walked around almost all provinces and districts of Turkey, in order to provide computers and various related solutions and services to more than 1,000 municipalities. He was the President of the Adana Branch of the Mülkiyeliler Union and Adana Güçbirliği Foundation for 3 years.

Returning to his professional life in 2002, Şekip Karakaya launched the "Smart City Automation Project" which has now become a brand in Europe. He won over 35 awards in the last 15 years at home and abroad with the AKOS Project.

Currently Sampaş Holding A.Ş. Chairman of the Board and the Chairman of Smart Cities platform. He also gives lectures on “Urbanisation” in Aydin University Academy of Branding.

BS at Bogazici University, Electronics Department. Ates has over 30 years of international companies’ sales and management experience. He started his career in SAMPAŞ in early 80s and after successful delivery of hundreds of cities and then led international players named Digital, Atos in Turkey and the region as their CEO. Ates joined back to SAMPAŞ after 2010 as a board member and currently leading technology stack in the board.

MS at University of California. BS at Northwestern University - Kellogg Graduate School of Management and Istanbul Technical University.

He has led Turkcell largest telecom operator teams as Chief Intl Expansion Officer and Chief Corp Business Officer for several years and currently leading SMT healthcare services and acting as the advisor to the Chairman at SAMPAŞ Holding.

Selcuk holds a BS degree in Computer Science. After acting as the managing partner of different ICT companies for several years, Mr. Ilıkcan joined SAMPAŞ in 2004. He has been actively taking senior management roles in smart cities, urban planning and ICT for more than 30 years.

He is currently acting as the General Coordinator for Urban Transformation projects. Having 30 years of experience, Mr. Ilıkcan, has managed numerous innovative B2B/B2C solutions and developed new business models for Local Government, Energy, Logistics, Finance and Retail Sector. He is the founding member of the Information Technology Employers’ Union. He is giving seminars and lectures to graduate students in Universities on Smart Cities and Smart Urban Transformation Topics.

As an angel investor, he became the partner of TRANGELS, angel network, in 2019 and acted as a lead investor for some startups. His recent activities concentrated on establishing “Venture Capital Investment Fund” for especially startups working in Smart Cities Domain.

Holds a Master’s Degree in Computer Science from Sabanci University. He had his graduate studies in Lehigh University, Pennsylvania. 15 years of experience Java Programming, SOA Governance, developing web-services and SAAS projects.

Implemented a major SOA project with support of TUBITAK (Turkish Science & Technology Foundation) on City Information Systems.

PhD in Computer Engineering at Boğaziçi University. 20+ years of project management and enterprise architecture experience on managing local and international and funded project (FP7, TUBITAK, H2020 and multinational smart city projects). Serdar has a BS and MS degree in Computer Science from Yıldız Technical and Boğaziçi Universities.

He has received his PhD in Computer Engineering at Boğaziçi University. During his academic career he had numerous studies on machine learning, artificial intelligence, financial time series forecasting and bayesian econometrics.

Dr. Yümlü has authored 10+ book chapters and international journal papers on machine learning and artificial intelligence and is giving lectures on smart cities transformation and in computer science. Serdar started his career as software engineer and has taken several different roles and responsibilities including team leader, enterprise architect and software solutions manager in versatile sectors finance, telecommunications and B2B services in the first 10 years of his career.

For more than 10 years, Serdar dedicated his time for Smart City vision and is actively directing business development at SAMPAŞ Holding as the Business Development Director. He is managing smart city initiatives and projects including smart energy, mobility, smart governance, smart water, health and cyber security.