Sedef joined the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin as a PhD student in 2015. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering and Master’s degree in Earthquake Engineering at the Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute, Bogazici University. Her PhD research focuses on the investigation and modeling of limit state behavior of post-tensioned steel beam-to-column connections for the collapse performance of these structures. She is also interested in semi-discrete finite element analysis of wave propagation in elastic solids and health monitoring of structures under earthquake loads.