The Role of Women in the Alliance of Civilizations: “The full social and economic advancement of the world depends crucially on human development as a first priority. There is no sustainable human development without the joint participation of women and men in all creative activities, including Science and Technology”.

My research is in the area of “Structural and functional genomics of drought resistance in wild barley and wild wheat”. As you know, drought is a global problem that affect plants as wheat and barley, whereas they are the strategic crops worldwide in human and animal diet. Wild wheat and barley have very important genes/alleles which provide tolerance to plant for different types of environmental stresses such as drought. Our final target is to pick-up important alleles from wild germplasm transfer to the cultivated ones by conventional breeding methods to make them tolerant to drought conditions. As a result of our efforts, we aim to create tolerant, healthy, and disease-resistant plants to provide more food in a world.

I would like to share my own experience with you as a women plant biotechnologist from Turkey. At the very beginning of my education, in high school, I was highly motivated student and fascinated with the idea of being in the laboratory and doing experiments. This was recognized by my biology teacher who is a woman and inspired me to be a researcher. After high school, I went to university. I graduated from Istanbul University, Department of Biology and I then went on to earn my Master Degree on plant biotechnology at the Molecular Biology Unit of the Biology Department.