I am a curious molecular biologist. My work focuses on biodiversity monitoring and developing molecular and bioinformatics tools to make DNA sequencing technologies cheaper, faster, and more accurate.
I am currently the co-founder and technical lead of
Wild Genomics, a bioinformatics scientist at
Thermo Fisher Scientific and also a lecturer of translational genomics at the
Keck School of Medicine at USC. Previously, I was the bioinformatics lead of
Sequential Skin. In my academic life, I was a Principal Investigator for the
Monitoring Climate Change In The Sub-Arctic project, funded by the Northern Research Fund. I also was a postdoctoral researcher for the
Optimizing Workflows For Freshwater Metabarcoding,
Biodiversity Monitoring In The Great Lakes, and
Metabarcoding With Nanopore Sequencing projects, funded by the Canada First Research Excellence Fund, US EPA, Centre for Biodiversity Genomics, and University of Guelph grants.
I earned my Ph.D. from
Department of Biological Sciences at the National University of Singapore, where I was advised by
Rudolf Meier. My doctoral research has been funded by TEV-SINGA (Singapore International Graduate Award), Singapore's National Water Agency (PUB), Tropical Marine Science Institute (TMSI), and National University of Singapore (NUS).
I got my B.Sc. degree in Molecular Biology and Genetics from
Istanbul Technical University. I also completed exchange studies for two semesters at the
Technical University of Munich.
I am passionate about aquatic research, DNA sequencing technologies, and bioinformatics research. I also had opportunities to do field work in the tropics as well as sub-arctic Canada, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Outside of science, I love writing, communicating science,
teaching Python & bioinformatics, travelling, and climbing.
You can reach my publications, projects, talks, and several other resources from the tabs above.