Female Turkish scientist set to receive UNESCO award

Turkish scientist Bilge Demirkoz has been identified as one of the 15 women recipients of the International Rising Talent grants awarded annually as part of the L’Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science programme.

An Associate Professor of Physics at Ankara-based Middle East Technical University, Demirkoz, born in Istanbul in 1980, has been chosen for her work on space radiation, according to a Turkish foreign ministry source who cannot be named due to restrictions on talking to the media.

She is set to receive the award at a ceremony that will be held on 23 March in Paris.

Bilge Demirkoz, who studied at MIT, Oxford, Cambridge and CERN for 15 years before coming back to Turkey five years ago, studies particle physics, researching the fundamental building blocks of matter and the forces and interactions between them.