Bio

I am a Research Scientist in the Statistical Genomics and Systems Genetics group at European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), where I currently focus on evaluating trustworthy machine learning methods for healthcare applications, as a part of European Lighthouse on Safe and Secure AI. My research interests span computational biology, cheminformatics, and natural language processing (NLP).

Prior to this, I was a postdoctoral researcher at German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), where I worked with machine learning models to represent cancer and population cohorts by integrating variant impact scores. My PhD research at Bogazici University focused on NLP-based representation learning for drug-target interaction modeling, earning the Best PhD Dissertation Award in 2020.

Beyond my research, I am passionate about mentoring and advancing diversity in science. I have had the privilege of mentoring participants at DjangoGirls events and MoveMINT, supporting women in STEM.

Employment

European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Heidelberg, Germany
Statistical Genomics and Systems Genetics
Research Scientist, 2024 - present

German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany
Computational Genomics and Systems Genetics
Post-doctoral researcher, 2019 - 2024

Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey
Department of Computer Engineering
Teaching Assistant, 2017 - 2019

Education

Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey
Ph.D. in Computer Engineering 2014 - 2019
M.S. in Computer Engineering 2012 - 2014

Dokuz Eylul University, Izmir, Turkey
B.S. in Computer Engineering (with Honors) 2008 - 2012