Ahmet Demir (academic)

Ahmet Demir, who was born in 1959 in Ulubey district of Uşak, completed his primary education in Afyon and graduated from high school in 1976. After graduating from Istanbul Technical University Faculty of Civil Engineering in 1981, he started his academic journey in 1983 as a research assistant at the institution known as Yıldız University at that time.

After the university was renamed Yıldız Technical University in 1992, he completed his master's degree in the Water-Environment program of the same university in 1985 and his doctorate in 1990; In his master's thesis, he examined the kinetic coefficients in industrial waters, and in his doctoral study, he examined the effect of plates on sedimentation data and optimum design parameters.

He also successfully completed a graduate program on "Sanitary Engineering" at the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education in Delft, the Netherlands, in 1988-1989.

Academically, he received the title of assistant professor in Yıldız Technical University Department of Environmental Engineering in 1991, associate professor in 1996 and professor in 2002. His work focused mostly on environmental biotechnology, water and wastewater treatment, and solid waste management. He served as department vice president between 2000 and 2006, and as department head between 2006 and 2008.

In addition to serving as the dean of the Faculty of Civil Engineering in two separate periods (2008-2010 and 2014-2016), he also took over this duty between October 2024 and December 2025. In 2017, Prof. Dr. Together with Mehmet Sinan Bilgili, he was a co-editor in the founding team of the journal "Environmental Research & Technology", whose first issue was published in 2018 and is indexed in Scopus today, and he still continues this responsibility.

After serving as the head of the Wastewater Treatment License Inspection Department at İSKİ between 1996 and 1998, it was announced that he would be appointed as the General Manager in December 2009 and he started this duty on January 4, 2010. During his term of office, he made public statements on issues such as the second phase of the Melen project, re-evaluation of waste water and monitoring of network water.

In an interview he gave to the "Water and Environmental Technologies" magazine in 2011, he stated that 1,453 billion TL of that year's 3,257 billion TL budget was allocated for investments and that Melen II and advanced biological wastewater treatment facilities were planned. During the same period, he also touched upon water saving, the use of treated wastewater in agriculture and industry, and regular sampling from different points of the network.

In May 2014, he handed over his duty to Dursun Atilla Altay and returned to academic life; According to İSKİ records, his departure date is 21 May 2014.

Ahmet Demir was appointed as the rector of Uşak University with the appointment decision numbered 2025/480 dated 11 December 2025. This appointment was recorded as a step that would combine both his academic and managerial experience in a new responsibility.