Vehbi Koç Award 2022 Presented to Distinguished Professor Dr. Ivet Bahar
This year, the Vehbi Koç Award which is given every year since 2002 in the fields of education, health, and culture respectively, is presented to the Distinguished Professor Dr. Ivet Bahar for her computational molecular and systems biology studies she has pioneered.Due to the pandemic conditions, the award ceremony took place on the digital platform of the Vehbi Koç Foundation. The Koç Holding Chairman of the Board Ömer M. Koç, who made a speech during the ceremony, stated, "One of the most important qualities of Ivet Bahar's groundbreaking studies in the area of biology and medicine is that she has made these achievements as the first person who had gone to college from her family. Another important quality is that she had completed all her basic studies as a scientist, in Turkey."
Ivet Bahar, who has been the first scientist from Turkey to be elected as a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, addressed teenage girls, especially those who want to pursue an academic career in the science world, emphasizing, "If you want, if you desire something and if you put in the effort necessary to make the achievement, there is nothing you cannot accomplish. You just need to stand up to the setbacks you face and you need to pursue your path, have the determination to do so. One of the missions I have is to be able to set an example for future generations, to shed light upon their path, and basically to contribute to the development of the talents they already have."
Ivet Bahar completed her undergraduate and graduate studies in chemical engineering at Bosphorus University, and her doctorate in chemistry at Istanbul Technical University, then becoming interested in polymer physics. She continued her academic studies at Bosphorus University between years 1986 and 2001 and received the professor title. She is a Distinguished Professor and the founding John K Vries Chair of the Department of Computational and Systems Biology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and co-founder of an internationally-acclaimed Ph.D. program in Computational Biology.
You can review Şalom's interview with Prof. Dr. Ivet Bahar conducted following her receiving the Kadir Has University's Outstanding Achievement Award in 2019, via the link below:
You can review Şalom's interview with Ivet Bahar about her research in the 'Bahar Laboratory' in the scope of developing a treatment for COVID-19, via the link below: