10/12/2025
The Turkish Academy of Sciences (TÜBA) has announced the recipients of its Outstanding Young Scientist Awards (TÜBA-GEBİP), given to support young scientists. Two academics from Sabancı University achieved a significant success by receiving the award. Dr. Duygu Kuzuoğlu Öztürk in the field of health sciences and Dr. Eren Günseli in the field of social sciences were among this year's outstanding young scientists.
Dr. Duygu Kuzuoğlu Öztürk, a faculty member at the Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, conducts research on how the WNT pathway, which plays a significant role in the spread of prostate cancer, is controlled at the post-transcriptional level in her project that was found deserving of the TÜBA-GEBİP Award. The goal is to develop new cancer treatment methods by understanding these mechanisms at the molecular level. Duygu Kuzuoğlu Öztürk also won the L'Oréal Türkiye-UNESCO Young Woman Scientist Award this year with her study entitled "Investigation of Protein Production Control Mechanism in Prostate Cancer and Its Translation into Therapy."
Dr. Eren Günseli, a faculty member at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, investigates when the brain recalls information in his project, which was awarded the TÜBA-GEBİP Award. Recent findings from Dr. Günseli's research team show that memory can make a flexible choice between energy-consuming active recall and more economical, direct, passive memory use. In this project, which was awarded the TÜBA-GEBİP Award, Dr. Günseli will examine under what conditions this flexibility emerges using behavioral tasks and EEG measurements. The project aims to reshape our current understanding of memory processes. Dr. Eren Günseli had previously won the BAGEP Award and the METU Mustafa Parlar Research Incentive Award in 2023, and the TÜBİTAK Incentive Award in 2024.
Award Ceremony on December 23rd
The TÜBA-GEBİP Awards have been given since 2001 to reward and encourage outstanding young scientists working in the fields of natural sciences, engineering, health sciences, and social sciences to continue their scientific work in Türkiye, to establish their own research groups, and to produce high-quality, internationally recognized projects and publications originating from Türkiye. This year's awards will be presented to the recipients by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at the TÜBA-TÜBİTAK Science Awards Ceremony to be held at the Presidential Complex on December 23, 2025.
