My Story

Ever since I was a child, I’ve been curious about everything — how things work, how they’re made. Over time that curiosity turned into something else: a curiosity to make things. And that curiosity took me to cinema first.

My first camera couldn’t record more than thirty seconds. That limit taught me something: put thirty-second pieces side by side, and you could tell a story. I didn’t know the language of film yet — characters jumped from one side of the frame to the other mid-scene, and continuity wasn’t a concept in my head. But the thrill of it was incredible.

I found an online portal called “Benim Sinemalarım” (“My Cinemas”). There were people like me there, and we made short films together. From that circle, Selçuk Aydemir is a well-known director today, and Ozan Akbaba, whom I met through the portal’s İzmir group, became a beloved actor. I took a different path, but that passion never ended.

I was still making short films while studying chemistry at Dokuz Eylül. But within chemistry, what truly fascinated me was biochemistry — proteins, DNA. It lay in front of me like a deep cellar waiting to be explored. I made up my mind, packed my suitcase and went to America.

I didn’t know much about American universities. On the advice of a friend doing a master’s at Georgia State, I applied there — it was my only application. Then another friend invited me to play soccer at Georgia Tech. The moment I set foot on campus, I saw a completely different world. By the time the match was over, I had made my decision: I had to apply here.

I took the GRE. Turkey’s old university entrance exam system, the ÖSS, which everyone loved to hate, paid off for the first time: I got a perfect score in math. Then I wrote to a few professors at Georgia Tech and started waiting.

The first interview invitation came from Georgia State. Across from me sat a Chinese professor. He had seen soccer, film and guitar on my CV. “You want to do a PhD, but you play soccer, you’re into film, you play guitar — how is this going to work?” he asked, as if that made me less serious about a PhD. I was hurt, but I pulled myself together: “These are things people do in their free time. If someone doing a PhD has no free time, then these won’t happen either.” I left feeling low, trying to understand why I had given that impression.

Shortly after, an invitation came from one of the professors I had written to at Georgia Tech. I got excited all over again and went. Our conversation went well. At the end, he turned to me: “I get at least a hundred emails a day. I can’t invite everyone for an interview. Do you know why I invited you?” I said I didn’t. “I love soccer, but in America there’s no one I can talk soccer with. When I saw on your CV that you play, I liked that. That’s why I invited you.”

The same line, two professors, two opposite reactions. Soccer had first brought me to Georgia Tech — and now it had opened the door, too. My PhD journey began in his lab.

I finished my PhD in three and a half years — far sooner than expected. There was a secret to it. Rote-learning education in Turkey loads you with a great deal of deep theory, but because it has little practical use, most of it fades with time. For me, this became a big advantage: when I put that deep theory, the kind that might never be useful to anyone, into practice in America, the blend of the two quickly moved me ahead.

Then came Germany. At the Technical University of Munich, one of Germany’s best universities, I spent four years going deeper into protein biochemistry and published in the field’s top journals, such as Nature Chemistry and Nature Communications — and for the first time, I truly felt like a scientist. When my professor moved to Hamburg, I went along and took on the leadership of the newly founded lab.

Eventually, an invitation from a professor in my field brought me back to America, this time to Dallas: to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at UT Southwestern Medical Center — one of the most prestigious places a scientist can work. I had one goal in mind: to set up my own lab and become a professor. I had come very close.

But right then, especially after Covid, I noticed that something had changed. Academia was no longer the curiosity-driven discovery that had drawn me in — it had turned into chasing grants and following the agenda of whoever funds you. It made no sense to me that such sophisticated work was being done with such limited resources, on such low salaries.

From Dallas, I returned to where my journey began, Atlanta — but this time to industry. I now work in the manufacturing of plasma-derived therapies. It’s going well. Along the way I also wrote a novel; I have a son, and the time I spend with him is what matters most right now. Still, I never put down the camera, or hung up my cleats.

Devler Ülkesinde Vampir Olmak (Being a Vampire in the Land of Giants)
novel, 2023