Draft:Mehmet Ozturk

Mehmet Ozturk (Turkish: Mehmet Öztürk) born in 1952 in Bolu-Mudurnu, Turkey is a Turkish-French liver cancer researcher and physician scientist; Professor of Medical Biology and Genetics.

He currently lectures at Izmir Tinaztepe University (IZTU), Faculty of Medicine and is Director, IZTU Galen Research Center, Öztürk Lab Director located on the Aegean coast of Izmir, Turkey.

He graduated from Gazi University Faculty of Pharmacy in 1974. He worked as a Pharmacist Intern at Paris Hospitals (Assistance Publique-Hopitaux de Paris) in France between 1977-1985, and received his Clinical Biochemistry and Immunology Specialization and Biochemistry Doctorate degrees from the University of Paris.

Between 1985 and 1992, he worked as a Post-Doctoral Researcher and Lecturer at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in the USA. In 1992, he became the Founding Director of the Molecular Oncology Laboratory at the Center Leon Berard Cancer Center in Lyon, France, and worked as INSERM Research Director at the same center between 1992-1995.

In 1995, he was invited to Bilkent University as the Head of the Department to establish the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics; He continued this duty until 2007. During the same period (1997-2013), he worked as the Founding Director of Bilkent University BilGen Genetics and Biotechnology Center (Bilkent MBG).

Between 2007 and 2012, he worked simultaneously as INSERM Research Director at Institut Albert Bonniot in Grenoble, France. Between September 2013 and February 2018, he worked as the Founding Director of Izmir International Biomedicine and Genome Institute affiliated to Dokuz Eylul University. He transformed this institution into the Izmir Biomedicine and Genome Center (IBG), which is Turkey's first national public research institution in the field of health, within the scope of Law No. 6550 (2018), and managed this center until 2021. IBG is one of the largest public-private bio investment in the region and in Turkey.

Prof. Dr. Mehmet Öztürk is known for his translational research to understand the genetic and molecular characteristics of cancer, especially liver cancer. More than one hundred scientific articles have been published and over 10,000 references have been made to them. His H-Factor is 46. As a Pharmacist specializing in Molecular Biology, Prof. Dr. Mehmet Öztürk has worked for many years for the production of biotechnological drugs based on gene engineering in his native country.

Though he was the first person to attend secondary school, high-school and ultimately university in the former village of Mudurnu, at the age of 39 during his post-doc at HMS/MGH, he made a breakthrough discovery on liver cancer: https://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/04/us/molecular-hot-spot-hints-at-a-cause-of-liver-cancer.html

Prof. Öztürk is a member of EMBO (1994), TÜBA (1995) the Turkish Academy of Sciences and UNESCO-TWAS (1996) academies and is the recipient of the TÜBİTAK-TWAS Science Award and the Koç Foundation Health Award (as the founder of Bilkent MBG).

He is married to Elife (retired Brigham & Women's Hospital, Endocrinology Department, Lab Supervisor in Boston) and he has two daughters, Defne (scientific researcher and former LOSEV Foundation for Children with Leukemia staff) and Deniz (non-profit development professional and former United Nations international consultant and private sector engagement expert) that resides in Boston, MA USA. He enjoys writing and nexus systems thinking on arts, culture and the life sciences.