Prof. Dr. Burcu ÖZSOY began her career as a lecturer at Istanbul Technical University’s Maritime Faculty in 2001. In 2005, she commenced her doctoral studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). By completing her doctorate on tracking the sea ice surrounding the Antarctic continent using satellite images, she had the opportunity to collaborate with national and international scientists, including those at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. In 2015, she founded the Polar Research Center (PolReC) at Istanbul Technical University. Ozsoy is currently the director of the TUBITAK Marmara Research Center (MAM) Polar Research Institute, which was established in 2019, and the President of TUBITAK MAM.

“Polar research and Climate Change”

Prof. Dr. Burcu Özsoy, born in Gaziantep, completed her undergraduate and graduate studies in the Department of Geomatics Engineering at Yıldız Technical University. In 2001, she began her academic career as a lecturer at the Faculty of Maritime, Istanbul Technical University, and in 2005, she started her doctoral studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). During her PhD, Özsoy shaped her research on satellite technology, particularly focusing on statistical mathematics and geophysical sciences.

Her doctoral thesis focused on monitoring the Antarctic continent and its surrounding sea ice using satellite imagery. This enabled her to collaborate with many national and international experts in the United States working on the same subject, including researchers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. As part of her PhD, she joined her first Antarctic Scientific Expedition in 2006–2007 season with American and Swedish scientists, during which she collected ground data on sea ice observations to validate satellite images and also studied the interaction between Antarctic sea ice and climate change.

In 2015, a Horizon 2020 project involving Arctic and Antarctic regions in partnership with European countries was accepted, for which she served as the principal investigator on behalf of Türkiye. She also contributed expert opinions to the special report on oceans and the cryosphere (frozen areas of the Earth such as ice surfaces, glaciers, sea ice, and permafrost) published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Özsoy has served as a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the Southern Ocean Observing System and was selected to the scientific committee of the 2020 Newton Fund Awards. In the same year, she received the Polar Studies Award in the Young Scientist Awards Program of the Turkish Academy of Sciences. She currently serves as Vice President of Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research and has produced numerous scientific works, including books, articles, papers, and interviews. In 2025, with the approval of the President of the Republic of Türkiye, she was appointed as a member of the “Presidency’s Local Government and Disaster Policies Board.”