TÜBİTAK MAM: Turkey's R&D Flagship

As TÜBİTAK Marmara Research Center, one of the largest research and development (R&D) centers in Turkey, we take our technological competence one step further every day with the motto 'better is possible'. Our focus is on R&D collaborations for the public and private sectors and developing internationally competitive products and services.

TÜBİTAK Marmara Araştırma Merkezi (MAM) olarak, geliştirdiğimiz milli Ar-Ge projelerinin yanı sıra ülkemiz özel sektörünün ihtiyaç duyduğu alanlarda yoğunlaştırdığımız ortak Ar-Ge’ye yönelik girişimlerimizle ülkemizin uluslararası rekabet edebilirliğine katkı sağlamayı amaçlıyoruz. Bünyemizdeki yedi araştırma enstitümüzde enerji, gıda, malzeme, yer ve deniz bilimleri, kimyasal teknolojiler, çevre ve temiz üretim ile gen mühendisliği ve biyoteknoloji alanlarında faaliyet gösteriyoruz. Geliştirdiğimiz milli teknolojiler, yaş ortalaması 30 olan ve %50’den fazlası doktoralı 900’ün üzerinde personelimiz tarafından hayata geçiriliyor.

One of our main objectives is to effectively transfer our knowledge and technology accumulation to the private sector by cooperating with the private sector in areas where the private sector is insufficient or in services that they need to procure from abroad. Our Center has 43 years of know-how in critical areas for our country such as energy, food, chemistry, gene engineering, materials, environment and earth sciences. In order to transfer this know-how to the private sector, we have launched our Open Door application in recent months. In particular, technology transfer to SMEs, which form the backbone of our economy, will both increase the R&D potential of our SMEs and directly contribute to growth. Our application has attracted great interest from the private sector since the day it was launched, and in the first 3 days alone, 250 companies have joined our application to conduct joint R&D with TÜBİTAK MAM. This number is now over 400.

With the "Open Door" application, companies betterisimumkun.com or mam.tubitak.gov.tr, they can share the services they need in the field of R&D and innovation with TÜBİTAK MAM. Thanks to the forms categorized by sector and need within TÜBİTAK MAM, research institutes communicate with companies according to their needs. In this way, it is aimed to bring together companies working in similar fields or developing complementary products/processes and to spread the culture of multi-partner R&D cooperation.

I must emphasize that TÜBİTAK MAM is not a competitor of our private sector, but a structure that complements and strengthens them in line with national priorities. Our core areas of activity are in line with our national R&D and innovation priorities and the needs of our industry. For example, in the Nanotechnology Cluster we run as TÜBİTAK MAM, 81 companies operating in different sectors from energy to automotive, health to textiles work together and share information and technology in order to offer high value-added products to our industry in the field of nanotechnology. Our goal is not only to transfer the technology we have developed to the private sector, but also to trigger the private sector to form collaborations within itself.

Producing imported products and services domestically is the right growth strategy for countries like Turkey, provided they are competitive. At TÜBİTAK MAM, we attach special importance to nationalization; we are developing many critical technologies, including the Electric Locomotive, the National Wind Turbine and the National Flu Vaccine, with domestic facilities at TÜBİTAK MAM. In addition to product development, our industrial testing and analysis services offered by TÜBİTAK MAM are another component of joint R&D. In 213 laboratories in our seven internationally accredited institutes, we provide 55,000 analysis services to Turkey annually. Providing these services domestically provides significant price advantages to our private sector and contributes to keeping our resources in the country. Our industrial testing and analysis services are in demand not only at home but also abroad. As TÜBİTAK MAM Europe and Africa We offer 1,200 different industrial testing and analysis services to countries on the continent. Since the end of 2015, especially Germany and TanzaniaWe have started to receive requests for industrial testing and analysis services from Turkey, and we are in talks with 28 countries. We expect the testing and analysis services we provide abroad to increase our R&D collaborations. In this way, we aim to contribute to closing the current account deficit of our country.

A significant portion of the services we provide as TÜBİTAK MAM are not offered by other institutions in our country. For example, the 'Carbon 14 Laboratory', which will be operational in the coming months at our Institute of Earth and Marine Sciences, is the only Carbon 14 age determination infrastructure in the Middle East and the Balkans, and is technologically superior to most of its counterparts in the world. In the laboratory, age determination can be made from charred plants, trees, bones and other samples by radiocarbon dating. With this method, which has applications in many different fields, we can, for example, determine the intervals at which an earthquake occurred on a fault line in the past or the age of an ancient artifact, and we can follow the course of drugs in our body in the same way. As a national technology, we offer many services that our companies cannot do on their own or that are too costly for them to do on their own.

As in the past, the limits of sovereignty of nations are no longer determined by the boundaries of their territories or the strength of their armies. Even natural resources such as oil have less and less power to influence world politics. In an age where the world is rapidly preparing for the Industry 4.0 revolution, your power is your knowledge and what you produce with this knowledge. As TÜBİTAK MAM, we have been working to create all kinds of innovations that will add value to life and our country since 1972.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Bahadır Tunaboylu,

President of TUBITAK Marmara Research Center