Dr. Melike Akkaya is an urban planner and smart city expert. She earned her Bachelor's degree in City and Regional Planning from Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University in 2012 and her Master's in Landscape Architecture from Szent István University in Budapest in 2016. Between 2018 and 2024, she completed her Ph.D. at Istanbul Technical University, focusing on integrating digital data into participatory planning. She was a Fulbright Visiting Researcher at the University of Florida, USA in 2022-2023. Her doctoral work was supported by the YÖK 100/2000 Ph.D. Scholarship and the Marmara Municipalities Union Thesis Grant. She worked at Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality’s (IMM) Vision 2050 Office in 2020-2022 and, since August 2024, has been a Smart City Specialist at IMM’s Smart City Directorate, contributing to the Digital Twin Project.