Volkan Ş. Ediger

He is the founder and president of the Energy and Climate Change Foundation (ENIVA) and founding executive committee of the Sustainable Production and Consumption Association (SUT-D), the first NGOs to be working in energy sustainability and climate change in Turkey. He served as the General Chair of ICE 2014, which was held by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) in 2014 in Istanbul and 5th Multinational Energy and Value Conference, which was held in İstanbul in 2015.

He moderated the forum for “The Big Energy Question: Powering Our Urban Future” as part of “The Great Energy Challenge”, a National Geographic Society Initiative organized in partnership with Shell in 2014 in Istanbul after Washington, D.C. and in London.

Ediger became Professor of Energy Economics at Izmir University of Economics in 2010. He served there as Founding Director of Research and Graduate Policies (ALP) and Founding Chairman of Sustainable Energy Master Programme in addition to several other committees and boards. He has been working as Professor of Energy Systems Engineering and also as the head of the department at Kadir Has University (KHAS) since 2011. He was Founding Coordinator of Strategy Development and Research Office (STRAR) and Founding Director of Center for Energy and Sustainable Development (CESD).

He was awarded the Sedat Simavi Social Sciences Award in 2006 for his book Neft and Petroleum in the Ottoman Empire. He was the first recipient of the Turkish Association of Petroleum Geologists’ Cevat Eyüp Taşman Award in 2007. He was listed in Top 10 Most Influential Voices in the Power Generation Today by POWER-GEN Europe in 2013.

Ediger's professional career has been shaped by research, teaching and consultancy simultaneously carried out at industry, university and government. Assigned as the first Energy Adviser to the President of Turkish Republic in 1998 and has worked for a total of twelve years with three Turkish presidents.

Ediger his career in industry at the Research Center of Turkish Petroleum Corporation (TPAO) in 1977 and served there as chief, manager, deputy head, and project adviser over the years. His career at TPAO mostly included implementation and management of a number of national and international petroleum research projects until 1998 when he became advisor to the president of Turkey. During his career, with the help of United Nations Development Programme Fellowship, he gained great experience on R&D project management during his visits to oil companies and universities in the USA.

From 1977-98, his findings were reported in 22 company reports (TPAO Report Nos. 190, 195, 276, 279, 287, 345, 427, 1065, 1185, 1255, 1264, 1265, 1269, 1565, 1755, 1757, 1949, 1964, 2097, 2118, 2191, 2312),

Ediger completed his undergraduate (1976) and M.Sc. (1980) studies at Geological Engineering Department of the Middle East Technical University (METU), Turkey and PhD study at the Department of Geosciences of the Pennsylvania State University (PSU), USA in 1986. He was appointed associate professor in 1992, and full professor in 2010.

Ediger began his academic studies as teaching assistant in METU in 1976-77, and continued in PSU as research and teaching assistants and laboratory coordinator between 1982 and 1985. He has taught undergraduate and graduate courses on energy-related subjects.

Volkan Ş. Ediger (born 1953, Ereğli-Konya) is a Turkish scientist, writer and bureaucrat. After graduating from the Middle East Technical University, he earned his PhD from the Pennsylvania State University in 1986. His training is in geology, geochemistry, and palynology.