GTU Students Achieve International Success

Two of our grad students, Maria Batool and Selin Gül Ünsal, who completed their master's studies and theses within the Plant Biotechnology and GTU MAR General Lab under the supervision of GTU Molecular Biology and Genetics Department's Teaching and Researching Faculty Member Prof. Yelda Özden Çiftçi, PhD, have recently earned full scholarships from internationally recognized universities to continue their career with their doctoral studies.

Maria Batool will be conducting her doctoral studies on plant-bacteria relationship with Prof. Peer M. Schenk, PhD, as a full scholarship student at the School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, University of Queensland (Australia), which is a leading university in terms of research on plant-bacteria relationship. Batool's master's thesis, which she completed under the supervision of Prof. Yelda Özden Çiftçi, PhD, and Prof. Mine Gül Şeker, PhD, as her co-advisor and which led her to receive acceptance for doctoral study, was titled the “Determination of Arabidopsis thaliana and Fraser Photinia Associated Putative Endophytic Bacteria Interaction”. On the other hand, Selin Gül Ünsal will be conducting her doctoral studies on "evolutionary biology and population genetics" as a full scholarship student at the University of Rome Tor Vergata (Università degli Studi di Roma "Tor Vergata"), which is another university that has made a name for itself in its own field, with Prof. Antonella Canini, PhD, and her master's thesis, some part of which she completed with Angelo Gizmondi, PhD, with an Erasmus grant and under the supervision of Prof. Yelda Özden Çiftçi, PhD, was titled “DNA Barcoding Study of Turkish Wild Cherry (Prunus avium L.) populations belonging to Adapazarı and Bolu Forestry Directorates”. As the GTU family, we congratulate our students and wish them continued success.