Yetkin Yildirim is RUSMP's Director of STEM Projects at Rice University. Dr. Yildirim received his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering in 2000 from the University of Texas at Austin and is registered by the State of Texas as a professional engineer. Dr. Yildirim has been serving as the president of Terra Pave International since 2012. Dr. Yildirim’s areas of expertise include construction materials, transportation engineering and STEM education.  Dr Yildirim served as the director of the Texas Pavement Preservation Center and served as a faculty member in the civil engineering departments at UT Austin and Katip Celebi University. He also served as the Director of the Engineering Education Research Center (EERC) at UT Austin, where he conducted research regarding new developments in model-based learning activities in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education.