Language has always been a central aspect of my life. As the first child of Turkish immigrants, I grew up in the beautiful Toggenburg region in northeastern Switzerland, speaking Turkish and learning the Standard German language and its local Swiss-German variety together with my parents. My equally extensive interest in the exact sciences led me to complete my high-school education with a specialization in physics and applied mathematics.

It was only in my undergraduate studies in Linguistics at the University of Bern, Switzerland that I could merge my interests, studying language in socio-cultural, acoustic, physiological, and experimental approaches. Upon finishing my BA in Linguistics (with a Minor in German Language and Literature Studies) with the predicate insigni cum laude, I was accepted to the European Master in Clinical Linguistics (EMCL), during which I could learn from experts in their respective fields in Finland, Germany, and the Netherlands. Remaining a student in the Swiss Study Foundation and scholarship holder of the Suyana foundation, I further integrated my favourite branches of science, empirically investigating aspects of psycho- and neurolinguistics through numerous methodologies.

After finishing my Master’s degree with the predicate excellent (A), I was accepted for a Fellowship in the International Doctorate for Experimental Approaches to Language and Brain (IDEALAB) that has led me to work with brilliant minds from Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Great Britain, and Australia. Currently awaiting my promotion procedure, I am now seeking to contribute the knowledge and skills that I have gained in the course of my academic career, such as my profound linguistic knowledge, statistics, organisation, and international collaboration to the ‘industrial sector’.

• Spending time with my loved ones

• Travelling the world (see picture of the Aurora Borealis near Rovaniemi, Finnland in 2017)

• Playing, watching, and arbitrating (until 2016) football

• Motorsports and Formula 1 in particular

• Reading books (my favourite book is Nobel Prize winner Ivo Andrić’s ‘The Bridge on the Drina’)

• Playing computer games and tinkering with computers in general