Lütfiye Durak Ata completed her undergraduate, graduate, and doctorate degrees in Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Bilkent University in 1996, 1999, and 2004. She continued her post-doctoral studies at the Statistical Signal Processing Laboratory of the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) between 2004-2005. She worked as a faculty member in the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering at Yıldız Technical University between 2005 and 2015. She started working at the Informatics Institute of Istanbul Technical University (ITU) in 2015. She had been the Deputy Director of the Institute between 2016-2018 and Director of the Institute between 2018-2020. Prof. Dr. Lütfiye Durak Ata has undertaken executive roles of many research and development projects on wireless communications and defense industry applications funded by various public and private sector organizations, including TÜBİTAK and the Defense Industry Presidency. She continues her work in the fields of next-generation communication systems and digital signal processing. Prof. Dr. Lütfiye Durak has been acting as the vice rector responsible for research and development of ITU since 2020.