Director, Hatfield Cybersecurity & Cyber Defense Policy Center
Birol A. Yeşilada is a professor of political science and the founding director of the Hatfield Cybersecurity & Cyber Defense Policy Center and the Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, a National Center of Academic Excellence (NCAE-C Institution). He is also the principal investigator for the World Values Survey Project in Cyprus.
Yeşilada's current research interests include global power transition, cybersecurity/cyber defense, the European Union, agent-based decision analysis modeling, international conflict resolution and politics of economic reform in emerging markets.
Yeşilada served as the director of the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government from 2017 to 2022 and as the director of the Center for Turkish Studies from 1998 to 2023. He also held the endowed chair in Contemporary Turkish Studies from 1998 to 2023. He served as vice president of the International Studies Association from 2020 to 2021 and is a member of the Executive Board of TransResearch Consortium. Previously, he served as director of the Middle East Studies Center at PSU from 2014 to 17. Yeşilada joined PSU in September 1998 from the University of Missouri-Columbia, where he served as chair of the Department of Political Science.
He has received numerous recognitions including Portland State's highest award, the Presidential Career Research Award, the International Studies Association Political Demography and Geography Section’s Distinguished Scholar Award, Fulbright Fellowship, the William T. Kemper Fellow of the University of Missouri and Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies.