Following her pharmacy degree in Turkey, she decided to work in the Neuroscience and Psychiatry field. For her PhD, she obtained a joint doctorate scholarship from French Embassy and trained as a behavioural neuropharmacologist and worked on preclinical modelling of depression in mice and antidepressant drug mechanisms. During her postdoctoral studies at CNRS in Strasbourg, she focused on the use of antidepressant drugs in neuropathic pain and she acquired an expertise in the pain field. In 2010, she obtained a tenure researcher position at CNRS and has started to focus her work on the comorbidity of chronic pain and mood disorders bringing together her PhD and postdoctoral expertise on a new and independent research axis in the laboratory of “Neuroanatomy, pain and psychopathology » that she is actually directing. She became research director in CNRS in 2020. She has 63 publications, 5 book chapters and two patents. She has been awarded two times with Young Investigator Awards from NARSAD, Young Talent Award from the University of Strasbourg, Prix Guy Ourisson and medal bronze from CNRS.

Find out more about her in this interview conducted by EFIC Research Projects Advisor Mary O'Keeffe: