ORKAN SEZER ’20 MAJOR: ENGINEERING SCIENCES HOMETOWN: ISTANBUL, TURKEY
& MARK LASER, MALS ’94, THAYER ’01 ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGINEERING
ORKAN SEZER ’20 HAS TAKEN ON AN AMBITIOUS SENIOR PROJECT THAT ATTEMPTS TO CREATE A LOW-COST AND EFFECTIVE WATER PURIFIER FOR REFUGEE CAMPS. PROFESSOR MARK LASER HAS AGREED TO SERVE AS HIS ADVISER. THE TWO TALK ABOUT ENGINEERING, LIBERAL ARTS, AND GOING ALL OUT FOR A BIG IDEA.
How did each of you end up at Dartmouth?
How did your project develop?
Orkan: When I talked to my high school counselor about pursuing engineering at a liberal arts school, she said Dartmouth might be the best fit. I’ve lived in a big city all my life. Istanbul has almost 18 million people and is very chaotic, so I was focused on rural schools, on smaller liberal arts schools with significant engineering departments. I visited campus, headed over to Thayer, walked into a class, and just sat in the back. I felt like Dartmouth was probably the only place where I could do something like that, so maybe it was meant to be.
Orkan: This past summer I went to southeastern Turkey with my mom to do a little sightseeing. It’s a very dry region but not too far from the sea. It also happens to be the location of Syrian refugee camps. That was how the idea came about. I decided I wanted to design something that would be useful for communities like that—communities that are living close to the sea but don’t have a steady supply of clean drinking water.
How did you start working together? Orkan: Last fall, I took ENGS 36, chemical engineering, with Professor Laser. I ended up having surgery before the term started, so I was pretty much bedridden and watching his lectures online. I felt like I was continually in catch-up mode. Most of our interactions that fall were just me asking questions. His classes are very tough, but you always feel the motivation because you have a professor who really wants to help you learn. Professor Laser, you really are one of the main reasons I survived that term. Mark: You did more than survive, man, you kicked some butt! Orkan has this quiet intensity about him, but he’s always very engaged in the classroom, always asking superb questions. He definitely has a passion for learning and for being active in something bigger than himself. He’s a very humble dude and doesn’t like to boast, but he has some serious chops when it comes to the classroom.
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Mark: You can be thinking about different scales. You might create a community desalination device, but you also could think about the opportunities for individual solutions. I think natural mechanisms would be great to focus on. When you think about Turkey, you think about sunshine, so evaporation and condensation could be important. Orkan: Oh, something I used to play around with was this water filter that was made out of three modules — layers of fine stone, sand, and activated carbon, then a filter paper that could clean water. And for ENGS 25, the thermodynamics class, my group worked on a conceptual desert cooler with a tube that was designed to suck warm air out of a house. When we analyzed it, it didn’t work too well, but I wonder if I could combine it with the three-part water filter. Mark: This is why I love including a term project as a major feature in all my classes. I basically say: pick something you’re excited about and go for it. My favorite thing about teaching is seeing students becoming really passionate about something and just heading in the direction that gets them fired up. If you follow your heart, you can’t go wrong, in life or at Dartmouth.
PHOTOGRAPH BY DON HAMERMAN
Mark: I did my undergraduate work in chemical engineering elsewhere and came out feeling as though the humanities side of things had taken a back seat. I decided to come to Dartmouth to do a master of arts and liberal studies. It was awesome. I got to take courses on comparative literature and art history and did a thesis on a collection of short stories. I ended up staying on and doing a PhD at Thayer, and I’ve been here ever since.
First, I’m looking at the composition of seawater and determining what we need to do to make it potable. Then I’ll go to one of the refugee camps to figure out what the specifications should be so that what I design actually helps the people I want to help. I’m starting with the science, then thinking about design, then trying to combine the two.