Dr. Toprak is a civil engineer and academician in water sciences (M.Sc., PhD). He interests in water resources, hydraulics, fluid mechanics, global climate change, statistics, and fuzzy logic.
He was born in October 8, 1967 in Diyarbakir – Turkey. He graduated from Hizirilyas First School, Ali Emiri Secondary School, and Gaziantep High School in 1979, 1982, and 1985 respectively. He graduated from Dicle University, Engineering Faculty Civil Engineering Department in 1989. Just after graduating, he worked in the private sector for a short period. He completed his MSc studies in 1994 at Firat University and his PhD from Istanbul Technical University (ITU) in 2004. He gets titles Assoc. Prof. and Prof. in 2011 and 2017, respectively.
Dr. Toprak has more than 150 of published studies, which 12 of them are books or books’ chapters in water resources, hydraulics, fluid mechanics, global climate change, statistics, and fuzzy logic sciences. His articles ranked with 1st, 4th, 6th, and 8th ranks in the top 25 article lists. He introduced to two new methods (SMRGT and ZFT) and brought four concepts (“climatic identity”, “time coefficient”, “stream coefficient”, and “ideal velocity”) into literature. The first methodology is developed to automatically construct membership functions and generate fuzzy rules, whereas the second one proposed for determining the water losses in drinking water – networks. The first concept related to the global climate change. The next two of them are used for modeling monthly mean flow in poorly gauged basins. The last one is a new concept for cross – sectional velocity distribution of any pipe or open channel flow.
He was supported with Overseas Fellowship by British Hydrological Society (BHS) and IRD to attend conferences namely British Hydrological Society and Balkan Water Observation and Information System (BALWOIS) respectively, in 2004. He has been invited to about 200 scientific meeting held in more than 20 countries (i.e. USA, Russia, Australia, UK, China, India, Spain, Algeria, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Republic of South Africa, and Egypt etc.). He invited to an International Conference held in USA in 2013 and to Climate and Environmental Physics Laboratory of Natural Science Institute, Civil Engineering Department, and Turkish Language and Literary Department of Ural Federal University for serial seminars and short courses in 2014. Similarly, he has been invited to Republic of South Africa in 2018 for consultancy on both water resources and drought, for presenting serial seminars, and giving short courses at University of Free State.
He held the Workshop on Water Sciences and their Application (SUBIC 2021), National Hydrology Congress (UHK 2017) and National Symposium on Modern Methods in Science (BMYS 2010) as the chair of the meetings. He organized and/or placed in the list of scientific and organizing committees of numerous national and international scientific meetings. He has worked as reviewer for more than 30 international journals indexed by SCI. He has also worked as consultant, reviewer, and panelist for the projects applied to the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) and to the many other institutions. He has directed numerous masters and doctoral thesis. He was responsible to sub-tile namely “Training, Knowledge and Capacity Building Strategies” under 6th Theme at the 5th World Water Forum held in Istanbul in 2009.
He rewarded two times Academic Performance Award and one of master's thesis he supervised was deemed worthy of the “Best Thesis Award” in the "Thesis Award Contributing to Environment, Health, Economy and Sustainable Development" category in 2022.
He is member of the “Chamber of Civil Engineering (IMO)”, “Society of Fuzzy Systems (BUSIDE)”, “Dicle University Natural Hazards Research and Application Center (DAFAM)”, “Fuzzy Logic and Its Technology (BUMAT)”, “Oriental Studies Association” (ŞAD), “Architectures and Engineers Group (MMG)”, and “American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE – During PhD)”.
He had worked as Vice – Rectors of Sirnak University (2018 – 2019), the head of Civil Engineering Department at Dicle University (2017 – 2018), vice-chair at the same department (2005 – 2009), and was director of both Renewable Energy Application and Research Center and Solar Energy Application and Research Center (2017 -2021).
Currently he is the head of the Civil Engineering Department of Dicle University. Plays chess, writes poem.