Organized by Üsküdar University to encourage high school students to develop creative projects in the fields of social sciences, health sciences, and science and technology, and to instill a discipline of scientific study and support entrepreneurial skills, the 11th Science and Idea Festival once again hosted a variety of innovative projects.
At the festival, organized in collaboration with the Provincial Directorates of National Education from İstanbul, Bursa, Kocaeli, Yalova, and Sakarya and featuring 750 projects, our preparatory class student, Elif Belinay D., earned notable recognition by finishing 5th in Türkiye in the “Social Sciences” category with her project, “Humor Engineering Literature Discovery Portal.”
Under her advisor’s guidance, her project received high praise from the festival jury and participants for creatively fusing science and literature on an interdisciplinary scale, blending traditional literature teaching with modern digital technologies, and analyzing Turkish humor through critical thinking and social memory.
By synthesizing anecdotes and satire, key elements of traditional Turkish literature, with modern-era caricatures and today’s digital content through a comparative document analysis, our student provided scientific data that humor continues to serve as a powerful tool for social critique and cultural memory transmission, even as its form evolves over time. We sincerely congratulate our student and her advisor teacher for their guidance in this project.