Arda Güreller

A real (ITEA) family man at heart

Arda Güreller graduated with a BSc in Mathematical Engineering from Yildiz Technical University in 2000 and followed this up with a Business Information Systems Master programme from Bogazici University in Turkey. Last year, he took on the role of External Public Funded Relations Leader at Ericsson in the Swedish capital Stockholm.

Drawing up a career roadmap

“I started my career in an e-learning company, the Kavrakoglu Management Institute, in 2002. These were early days for the internet,” Arda recalls, “but our founder, Professor Ibrahim Kavrakoglu, was very confident about the potential of e-learning and now, during the pandemic some twenty years later, we can see how much foresight he had. It was also during that period that I became involved in my first international R&D project in the sixth EU Framework Programme, together with my manager Alper Elicin. This project, along with the respective technologies, proved to be very informative for me and it helped me a lot to think more about futuristic technologies that can help the world to become a better place. I was not aware that I was entering a career path that would affect rest of my life. Since the Kavrakoglu Management Institute was also working actively in management consultancy, I gained the opportunity to better understand how organisational improvements can enable companies to become more successful. Those first years helped me a lot to structure my future career roadmap. When I joined the Ericsson family in 2010, together with Dr. Ozgur Gungor and Fatma Ozdemir Canverdi, I got involved in the management of different internal and international R&D projects, including ITEA. I have joined many ITEA project discussions with many colleagues around the world. While I continued to contribute to the ITEA community, in 2018 we set up the Ericsson Research Turkey branch and I worked with Dr. Henrik Almeida to establish the first private research lab focusing on Telecommunication Networks and Security before moving to Sweden in 2021.”

Ever-present

Arda has been actively involved in the ITEA Community actively since 2013. “From the outset I have been a loyal supporter of this family. I’ve hardly missed a PO Days event since 2013 and during those years I had chance to meet some very important R&D figures from academia, SMEs and industrial players. To be able to discuss and hear different opinions among experts from throughout the EU, Korea and also Canada has been a real privilege for me. While I continue to be part of the ITEA project discussions, I started to support my colleague Anders Caspár in representing Ericsson in the ITEA Steering Group, a role I continue today and which helps me to grasp the high-level vision of the EU’s prominent institutions and their approach towards technology and its realisation.”

Like a family

“As I have already mentioned, ITEA is like a big family. Starting from the first phase of projects to the closure of the projects you interact with different organisations for three or more years, during which time lots of things change that can affect your project. You need to find good ways to deal with those changes together with the consortium, and by doing so you strengthen your relations with partners locally and globally. In ITEA projects you can always interact with different partners from different parts of the world, which not only enhances your understanding of technology and solutions provided by partners but can also lead to new sub projects that can extend year after year.”