On 28 October 2018 at the Fifth Turkish Medical World Congress Assistant Professor Dr. Urartu Özgür Şafak Şeker of the Bilkent University UNAM-Materials Science and Nanotechnology Institute and Neuroscience graduate program was presented with Aziz Sancar Incentive Award by TÜSEB (The Health Institutes of Turkey). Dr Seker’s prize was presented by the Vice President of the Turkish Republic Dr. Fuat Oktay. The award is named after Aziz Sancar, the Nobel Laurate in Chemistry in 2015, to celebrate his achievements in Science.
Dr. Seker is awarded for his work in Synthetic Biology, and Genetically Engineered Biosystems. Dr. Seker research covers cellular programming by employing synthetic genetic circuits to address disease conditions by developing cellular devices as living therapeutics, developing cellular systems to design new generation of living biomaterials and cellular whole cell biosensors for biomedical applications. Dr. Seker earned his PhD in Molecular Biology and Genetics in 2009 from İstanbul Technical University and University of Washington (visiting graduate student-2004-2008). Later he did a postdoctoral research at Singapore Nanyang Technological University (2010-2011), and carried out another postdoctoral study at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Biological Engineering and Synthetic Biology Research Center (2011-2014). Dr Seker is a faculty member at Bilkent University UNAM, and leading Synthetic Biosystems Research group located at the Life Sciences Section of the UNAM Building.
Aziz Sancar Incentive Award is given to the scientists who proved to have qualifications that may make significant international contributions to the science through their works and studies in the future, provided that the winners must be younger than 40 years at the first day of the year of prize award.
