Dr. Selin Gürdere Akdur is a design educator, researcher, and social designer with an undergraduate engineering background. She is a full-time Assistant Professor at Istanbul Bilgi University in the Department of Industrial Design. Before becoming an academic, she worked mainly in the production and design departments of furniture, lighting and interior architecture sectors in Istanbul. During her design graduate education, she contributed to many national and internationally supported research projects of different scales. She is interested in the intersection of art, design, technology, society, and social issues, and ideas and practices that seek design-oriented solutions to social problems through participatory, collaborative, interdisciplinary creative practices. In March 2020, she launched the “Social Design Platform” in order to contribute to the visibility of the local practices and to the field of socially oriented design. She contributes to many design-based projects and scientific research both in academia and in the sector as a researcher and consultant on subjects parallel to her areas of interest and expertise.