Birol Yeşilada is a professor of Political Science and International Studies at the Hatfield School of Government at PSU and is the recipient of PSU's 2024 Presidential Career Research Award.
Birol is the Founding Director of the Oregon Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, and was previously the Director of the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government, Director of the Center for Turkish Studies, and holder of the endowed chair in Contemporary Turkish Studies. He has served as Vice President of the International Studies Association and is a TransResearch Consortium Executive Board member. Birol received a B.A. in Neurobiology in 1977 from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.A. in Political Science in 1979 from San Francisco State University, and a Ph.D. in Political Science in 1984 from the University of Michigan.
His current research projects focus on power transition, cybersecurity/cyber defense policy, the European Union, and world values survey. His publications include eleven books and more than 40 articles and book chapters. In 2003, he was invited by the White House to participate in the commission that drafted the new Constitution of Afghanistan. He has been an invited policy consultant for various U.S. administrations, the World Bank, the Council on Foreign Relations, Booz Allen Hamilton, Nathan Associates, and Barclays Capital.
Mark A. Boyer, Executive Director of the International Studies Association and Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor at the University of Connecticut, says of Yeşilada, "Birol has truly become a leading voice on foreign policy and international relations of the Mediterranean region. His body of scholarship includes extensive work on Turkey, Cyprus, the EU and much more. Not only has his work gained traction in North American scholarly outlets, but also quite extensively throughout European and Asian publishing venues. Through it all, Birol brings to his work a rigor that is at the very high end of what we see in the social sciences."