According to an old tradition in Anatolia, when a child becomes one year old, he/she is made to choose among various objects (e.g. scissors, flute, abacus, ball, banknote etc.) that are put in front him/her by the parents. The item picked up by the toddler is believed to give hints about the child's future occupation: An abacus would suggest that the kid become a scientist, whereas a banknote would imply a prospective merchant.
Although the above-mentioned ceremony is carried out merely for fun and is not taken very seriously, I believe that I always had an interest in science because I had picked up the abacus back then! After graduating from the Specialized Science High School in Istanbul, I went to Bilkent University (in Ankara, Turkey) for studying physics as an undergraduate. In 2000, I came to the US for grad school where I have received a Ph.D. degree in Biophysics and Computational Biology from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in December 2006. During my graduate study, I worked with Prof. Taekjip Ha (http://bio.physics.uiuc.edu/) on single molecule fluorescence microscopy. I was primarily responsible for developing novel experimental assays for single molecule toolkit using vesicles.
Pursuing a major in physics, my interest in biology started in my freshman year as I was taking an introductory class in molecular biology. Especially, the lactose mechanism in E coli knocked my socks off, and I then decided that I should definitely get back to studying biological systems at some point. Having joined the Paulsson lab, I feel like I am back home for studying gene expression.
Again I picked up the abacus, this time for the integer counting of proteins in single cells...
