BOULDER, CO – Doga Cagdas Demirkan, a third-year mining engineering Ph.D. candidate at Colorado School of Mines, has been named the winner of the annual student poster competition held in conjunction with the Rocky Mountain Advanced Computing Consortium’s (RMACC) High Performance Computing Symposium. Judging was done virtually during the Symposium, held on-line in mid-May.
Demirkan’s entry, titled “Real-Time/Near-Real-Time Methane Prediction in Longwall Coal Mine Using Artificial Intelligence,” earned him an all-expenses paid trip to the Supercomputing Conference – SC21 – in St. Louis, MO in November.
A native of Ankara, Turkey, Demirkan has two degrees from Middle East Technical University (METU) in Turkey. He earned a B.Sc. degree in mining engineering and a M.Sc. in Geodetic and Geographic Information Technologies, studying machine learning algorithms and satellite imagery.
“In my current research, I am working on implementing new technologies/solutions in the engineering field. I built an Augmented Reality (AR) navigation system for underground mines for search and rescue teams. I am also developing Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) interfaces for decision-making support with complex scientific data. My other research topic forms the basis of this poster and is about developing a real-time explosion hazards system for underground coal mines,” he explained.
Demirkan said methane explosions are one of the most dangerous accident types leading to fatalities in underground coal mines. “This study uses high-performance computing (HPC) to predict real-time methane concentration as a warning system for decision-makers,” he said.
“For my future plans, I would like to continue working with novel technology and implementing these technologies into the interdisciplinary engineering field to solve practical problems.”
Demirkan thanked the National Institute of Safety and Health (NIOSH) for funding his research. “I also would like to thank my supervisor Dr. Sebnem Duzgun, my whole family and my wife Cansu for their trust and support. I could not be here without them,” Demirkan said.
Primarily a volunteer organization, the RMACC is a collaboration among 32 academic and research institutions located in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. To learn more about the RMACC and its mission, visit the website: www.rmacc.org/
