BBM Magazine Issue-Sayı: 44 May/June - Mayıs/Haziran 2021

56 INTERVIEW • RÖPORTAJ BBM / MAYIS - HAZİRAN 2021 • MAY - JUNE 2021 It may be because of passion about reading that I had a thriving life as a student at school. Having completed my Master’s Degree at ITU, I had the chance to carry out scientific studies at distinguished universities in the USA for 13 years. My first stop was MIT. Then, I completed my Ph.D at the University of Chicago, after which I studied for a postdoctoral degree at Harvard for six years. In that period, I focused on the subject of “Antibody production through synthetic methods and determining the structures of proteins in atomic resolution”. Antibody production is a technology that finds applications for dif- ferent diseases and cancer in particular. However, dur- ing my studies, I began to take an interest in other fields as well. So, I strived to better and improve myself in the subjects such as protein production and purification via recombinant ways, including the proteins, vaccines, and enzymes as well. Currently, I continue to serve as the Vice Director of the Life Sciences and Biotechnol- ogy Institute at Bezmialem Vakif University, and as the Founder CEO at LIVZYM Biotechnologies. When you returned to Turkey, you established the Life Sciences and Biotechnology Institute at Bezmi- alem University, among other things you did. What made you establish the institute? My decision to return to my homeland is one of the landmarks in my life. I would like to mention once again that I am so grateful to my dear friends who encour- aged me in taking this decision and I will always re- member them with praise. I returned to the country in 2014 to lead the reverse brain drain with a drive from the support of the people around me and I focused on the establishment of the Bio- technology Institute within Bezmialem Vakif University. Under the auspices of our Chairman of the Board of Trustees and our Rector and with their strong support in this respect, we managed to found an institute where we can truly reflect the practices of successful exam- ples in the world. We have the laboratories we built with an investment of over ₺ 40 million funded by our university, where 10 academic researchers who studied at the world’s leading universities such as MIT, Stanford and Johns Hopkins are employed. In this way, we man- aged to import valuable people with a good command of biotechnology, from abroad to our country. LIVZYM Biotechnologies is the first and only Bio- technology R&D factory in the Middle East and Afri- ca. Can you tell us about the story behind this proud investment? My mind had already been occupied with the ques- telerde bilimsel çalışmalar yürütme şansı yakaladım. İlk durağım MIT idi. Sonrasında Chicago Üniversitesi’nde doktoramı tamamladım. Ardından da altı sene boyunca Harvard’da doktora üstü ihtisas yaptım. Bu dönemde “Sentetik yollarla antikor üretimi ve proteinlerin atomik çözünürlükte yapılarının belirlen- mesi” konusuna odaklandım. Antikor üretimi, kanser başta olmak üzere farklı hastalıklara uygulaması olan bir teknolojidir. Ancak eğitimim sırasında bunun dışın- da başka alanlara da ilgi duymaya başladım. Bu bağ- lamda protein, aşı ve enzimleri de içeren rekombinant yollarla protein üretimi ve saflaştırılması gibi konularda da kendimi yetiştirmeye ve geliştirmeye çabaladım. Şu anda ise Bezmialem Vakıf Üniversitesi Yaşambi-