Aerospace industry of Turkey captured momentum in the last decade, which results in a strong reduction of external dependence for the aviation and defense industry. Substantial investments in the aviation industry have been made in order to meet the needs of the country and develop the products that can compete in the world market in the next ten years. These developments in aviation industry necessitate an increase in human resources, such as a requirement to double the number of personnel to 10.000 people working on air vehicle design and production at TAI. In this context, new targets should be determined and translated to educational programs to answer human needs. National combat aircraft design and production project which is planned to as mass production in the next 10 years by TAI within the needs of Air Froce and industry, as well as original product development projects such as Anka and Hürkuş are supported by the planned investments both for technology and human sources.

It is evident that the key to achieve the growth and development requirements for Turkey to be one of the local leaders in aerospace is to train qualified specialist engineers with academic knowledge and experience. The sustainability of this can be achieved by the presence of institutions that will provide high quality and focused training at the graduate level, which can address interdisciplinary needs for aircraft design.

‘Aircraft Design’ basically consists of two cycles called front and detail design. Production starts when all the cycles are completed within the requirements of the aircraft. The key requirements in the success of the aircraft are the preliminary design cycle in which basic geometric load and weight data are generated. The correct decisions taken in this cycle translate the cost-time relationship in the aircraft design cycle into the company's benefit. For these reasons, the benchmark for the success of the product is on-time completed projects for aircraft design cycles reliably.

The evaluation of the main branches, which are studied during the aircraft design, together with the source, work and components of interest, enables the creation of graduate programs by university and industry cooperation which are thought to be effective in terms of time and cost. Within this framework, the training program, which is established in line with the industry needs, is a non-thesis master's program named ‘Aerospace Structures and Materials’. Fundamentally, the program has been created two major fields of aerospace engineering and materials science and engineering.

The graduate degree for aerospace engineers in industry is provided through a well-defined curriculum with a high standard and quality. Those who are currently graduates of engineering, but who do not have direct experience in the aerospace industry, are often trained during their professional life by internal and external trainings. From this point of view, those who have only received a bachelor's degree in engineering will be less satisfactory compared to those who have undertaken the required education in terms of meeting the needs of the aerospace industry. Around the world, the most important training providers are Boeing, Airbus, Fokker and BAE Systems, which are the giant players of the civil aviation and aerospace industries and they also meet the training needs of the civil aviation sector. In these applications, the candidates who have passed a few exam stages are trained by the experts from the universities and within the institution. As can be noticed, there is a requirement for an academic institution and program that directly addresses this need of the aviation industry. These training needs will be met with this program.

Click here for the program's website.

Year	Number of Graduates
2020	23
2021	13