Good evening everyone and congratulations on completing the program! We are honored to speak on behalf of the students here and tonight we would like to highlight some great times experienced this past week. But to start off, we all need to thank Drs. Metin and Yasmine Akay, Dr. Nisha, and Dr. Dragomir.

From waking up to a great view of the ocean to the influential lectures, we are really thankful for the opportunities and time we have had in Izmir. Some of us got to enjoy early morning swims while others enjoyed walking on the beach and getting late night burgers. We were all able to take advantage of this beautiful city and enjoy what it has to offer.

We want to thank all the faculty and staff:
-To Dr. Michael Mitchell- We really want to thank you not only for starting off the program with great presentations, but for giving us advice anytime we had questions. Also, I would like to thank you for being a great dance partner and learning salsa, bachata, and other dances with all of us.
-Dr. Mohammad Abidian and Sheereen Majd- Thank you for giving us engaging presentations of neural engineering and hydrogels. Everyone enjoyed the well structured lectures and learned a lot from them.
Also, to both of you, your super cute baby made us smile every time we saw him and brightened up our days.
-Dr. Colin Brennan- We don’t meet a lot of successful entrepreneurs who can directly relate to our love for engineering. Thanks for giving us insightful knowledge on the real world and teaching us about your experiences with starting our own business.
-Dr. Metin Sitti- Your talks on milli/micro sized robots amazed a lot of us and we started to see things from your presentations in real life. Yesterday someone pointed out a swarm in the city and even Dr. Akay mentioned that they were part of your swarms.
-Dr. MD Wang- I know that we will never forget the three points and four v’s on bioinformatics and will always be able to give educated responses in two minutes when asked to explain what it means.

Let us not forget the two most important faculty with us here today; our amazing organizers, mentors, hosts and couple of 35 years, Drs. Metin and Yasemin Akay. Thank you. Your hospitality was enormous. Thank you for arranging for us to travel to the University’s president’s house for dinner yesterday night, to visiting Ephesus and the House of the Virgin Mary today. Throughout the entire summer school, you served as our mentors; whether it was learning Turkish, guiding us though the city, or advising us of researchers to get in contact with post our student presentations, everything you did was extremely caring and helpful. All of this, and the many personal interactions we had made us feel truly like a family to you both, and for that we are ever grateful.

Speaking of family, we arrived here today from multiple countries, faraway lands, different research agendas, but as we depart later this week let us remember that we all became a family. As professor Wang said behind the science and data we analyze is an individual, whether they be a patient or researcher like us, it’s our responsibility to be veracious in our profession – because we are all family.

With that we hope you all enjoyed this wonderful evening and we wish everyone the best and hope to stay in touch.