Prof. Dr. Zafer İlken is a Turkish educator, university administrator and the author/co-author of numerous scientific papers, who has been serving (since 2006) as the third rector of the İzmir Institute of Technology, founded in 1992. Zafer İlken received his degrees in mechanical engineering from Ankara's Middle East Technical University (B.Sc., 1982) and İzmir's Dokuz Eylül University (M.Sc., 1987 and Ph.D., 1990).