TÜBİTAK MAM Polar Research Institute Director, Istanbul Technical University Maritime Faculty Faculty Member, TÜBİTAK Marmara Research Center President, Gaziantep-born Prof.Dr.Burcu Özsoy completed her undergraduate and graduate education at Yıldız Technical University, Department of Geodesy and Photogrammetry Engineering.He started his academic studies as a lecturer at Istanbul Technical University Maritime Faculty in 2001 and his doctoral studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) in 2005.Özsoy shaped his studies on satellite technology especially with statistical mathematics and geophysical sciences during his doctorate.By doing his doctoral study on the subject of monitoring the Antarctic continent and the sea ice around it with satellite images, he had the opportunity to work with many national and international competent scientists working on the same subject in the United States, one of them being NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.Within the framework of his doctorate, he participated in the first Antarctic Science Expedition with American and Swedish scientists in 2006 - 2007, and during the expedition, he collected terrestrial data on sea ice observations, verified satellite images, and also carried out studies on the interaction between Antarctic sea ice and climate change.In 2015, the 3 Million Euro Horizon 2020 project, jointly with European countries and including the Arctic and Antarctic regions, was accepted and Türkiye was the executive of the project.He served as the founding director of the Polar Research Center (PolReC), which was established at Istanbul Technical University in January 2015, until December 2019.For 4 years, PolReC has served as Turkey's first and only polar research center, with national and international scientific collaborations, as well as the coordination of the Turkish Science Base project in Antarctica, which is under the auspices of the Presidency, and the national umbrella for the polar science program strategy.Prof.Dr.Burcu Özsoy led the First, Second and Third National Antarctic Science Expeditions, which were held in 2017, 2018 and 2019 within the framework of the "Antarctic Turkish Science Base Project" under the auspices of the Presidency, under the responsibility of the Ministry of Industry and Technology and under the coordination of PolReC.He undertook the expedition leadership of the first Turkish Arctic Science Expedition, which was held in July 2019.He gave an expert opinion to the special report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), covering the ocean and cryosphere (frozen areas on earth, including ice surfaces, glaciers, sea ice and permofrost). Özsoy is the director of the TÜBİTAK Marmara Research Center (MAM) Polar Research Institute, which was established on December 3, 2019, and the President of TÜBİTAK MAM.Özsoy, who served as the coordinator of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth National Antarctic Science Expeditions and the Second and Third National Arctic Science Expeditions, which were carried out after 2020, was also elected to the scientific committee of the 2020 Newton Fund Awards, as well as being a member of the Scientific Executive Board of the Southern Ocean Observation System.He won the Polar Studies award at the 2020 Turkish Academy of Sciences (TÜBA) Young Scientist Awards Program.He serves as the Vice President of SCAR and has produced many scientific studies such as books, articles, declarations and interviews to date.
