Bornin Gaziantep, Prof. Dr. Burcu Özsoy completed her undergraduate and graduateeducation at Yıldız Technical University Geodesy and Photogrammetry EngineeringDepartment. She started her academic studies as a faculty member at IstanbulTechnical University Maritime Faculty in 2001 and her doctoral studies at theUniversity of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) in 2005. Özsoy shaped her studies onsatellite technology during her doctorate, especially with statisticalmathematics and geophysics. She conducted her doctoral studies on the subjectof tracking the Antarctic continent and surrounding sea ice with satelliteimages, and had the opportunity to work with many national and internationalcompetent scientists working on the same subject in the United States, one ofwhom was NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Within the framework of her PhD, sheparticipated in the first Antarctic Scientific Expedition in 2006-2007 withAmerican and Swedish scientists, and during the expedition she collected grounddata on sea ice observations, verified satellite images, and also conductedstudies on the interaction between Antarctic sea ice and climate change.
In2015, Horizon 2020 project, which included the Arctic and Antarctic regions,was accepted in partnership with European countries, where Ozsoy led theTürkiye’s implementation of the project. She served as the founding director ofthe Polar Research Center (PolReC), established at Istanbul TechnicalUniversity in January 2015, until December 2019. PolReC was Türkiye’s first andonly polar research center for 4 years, and undertook the coordination of theTurkish Science Base project in Antarctica, which was under the auspices of thePresidency, through national and international scientific collaborations, andalso served as the national umbrella for the polar science program strategy.Prof. Dr. Burcu Özsoy led the First, Second and Third National AntarcticScientific Expeditions in 2017, 2018 and 2019 under the auspices of thePresidency, the auspices of the Ministry of Industry and Technology and thecoordination of PolReC within the framework of the “Antarctic Turkish ScienceBase Project”. She assumed the leadership of the first Turkish ArcticScientific Expedition in July 2019. She provided expert opinions on the specialreport published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)covering the ocean and cryosphere (frozen areas on earth including icesurfaces, glaciers, sea ice and permofrost).
Özsoyis the director of the TÜBİTAK Polar Research Institute, which was establishedon December 3, 2019, and the President of TÜBİTAK Marmara Research Center(MAM). Özsoy, who undertook the coordination of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth,Seventh, and Eighth National Antarctic Scientific Expeditions and the Second,Third, and Fourth National Arctic Scientific Expeditions after 2020, waselected to the Scientific Executive Board of the Southern Ocean ObservingSystem and the scientific committee of the 2020 Newton Fund Awards. Shereceived the Polar Studies Award in the 2020 Turkish Academy of Sciences (TÜBA)Young Scientist Awards Program. She was deemed worthy of the “Power of theAcademy” Award in the “2024 Power of Turkey Awards” program organized byMÜSİAD. She serves as the Vice President of SCAR and has produced manyscientific studies in the form of books, articles, papers, and interviews todate.
