Assoc. Prof. Burcu Ayşen Ürgen is a faculty member in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience Program at Bilkent University. She also serves as Associate Director of the Aysel Sabuncu Brain Research Center and Assistant Chair of the Neuroscience program. Dr. Ürgen earned her BS in Computer Engineering from Bilkent University, her MS in Cognitive Science from Middle East Technical University and her PhD in Cognitive Science from the University of California, San Diego. She completed postdoctoral research at the University of Parma. She directs the Cognitive Computational Neuroscience Lab, where her research centers on visual perception, biological motion and action perception using neuroimaging methods such as fMRI, EEG and intracranial recordings alongside computational tools including machine learning and computer vision. Her interdisciplinary work also explores human interaction with artificial agents such as social robots. She has received multiple TÜBİTAK grants as principal investigator.
Why did you choose an academic career?
My answer has both an intellectual and a practical side. I have always enjoyed discovering new things and trying to understand how the world and mind works. Even during high school, I was drawn to exploration and learning. Later, while studying engineering at Bilkent, this interest became clearer to me. Through internships in industry, I realized that while applying existing knowledge can be satisfying, what truly excited me was the possibility of discovering something new, asking questions that do not yet have clear answers.
Academia appealed to me because it provides the intellectual freedom to pursue curiosity-driven questions and explore ideas in depth. The idea of spending my career investigating problems that are not yet fully understood felt both exciting and meaningful.
On a more practical level, I also realized that the rigid structures of many workplaces, such as strict schedules or formal rules about dress codes, did not quite suit my personality. Academia, in contrast, offers a more flexible environment that allows people to organize their work in ways that support creativity and deep thinking. For me, it felt like the natural place to turn curiosity into a career.
What subject do you most enjoy teaching, and why?
I particularly enjoy teaching courses that closely connect with my research, such as perception, cognitive neuroscience and brain imaging methods. These subjects create a natural bridge between teaching and research, allowing me to bring real scientific questions and experiences into the classroom.
While textbooks provide an important foundation, I find that students become especially engaged when they hear about the process behind scientific discovery, how research questions emerge, how experiments evolve and how unexpected challenges often lead to new insights. Sharing these personal research experiences makes the material feel more alive and meaningful.
One of the most rewarding aspects of teaching is seeing students become curious about research themselves. When classroom discussions spark that curiosity and students begin to imagine themselves as future scientists, teaching becomes truly fulfilling.
What projects are you working on currently?
My research focuses on understanding how the human brain perceives and interprets complex sensory and social information in real-world environments. One line of work in my lab investigates how we perceive and understand the actions of others, including both humans and robots, and how the brain represents agency and meaning when we observe different kinds of agents.
Another direction of our research explores immersive sound environments. In collaboration with colleagues at Bilkent COMD (Dr. Ufuk Önen and Andreas Treske), we study how spatially organized sound, such as music presented through immersive audio technologies, can influence perception, attention and the sense of immersion.
We also collaborate with some colleagues in interior architecture (Prof. Yasemin Afacan) on neuroarchitecture projects that examine how built environments shape human perception and experience. By combining methods from cognitive neuroscience with insights from architectural research, we aim to better understand how people perceive and interact with the spaces around them.
Overall, our work aims to study the brain in conditions that resemble real-world experiences as closely as possible. This interdisciplinary approach, supported by Bilkent’s collaborative research environment, allows us to combine behavioral experiments with brain imaging methods such as EEG and fMRI to better understand how the brain processes rich and dynamic environments.
What excites you about your work? And what is the coolest thing about your work?
What excites me most about my work is the opportunity to explore questions about the human mind that we still do not fully understand. I am particularly fascinated by how the brain makes sense of the complex sensory and social world around us, how we perceive actions, interpret intentions or experience rich sensory environments such as immersive sound. The process of turning these big questions into experiments and gradually uncovering new insights is incredibly exciting.
Another aspect that makes my work especially rewarding is its interdisciplinary nature. Many of our projects bring together perspectives from cognitive neuroscience, engineering and technology, allowing us to study perception and the brain in innovative ways.
But perhaps the coolest part of my work is the people I get to work with. Being surrounded by curious and motivated students and colleagues who constantly ask new questions and challenge ideas creates a very dynamic research environment. Watching students grow into independent researchers and develop their own scientific curiosity is one of the most fulfilling parts of academic life.
What’s your best work?
If I had to choose, I would say the lab culture we have built together with my students. While research papers and projects are important outcomes of academic work, I believe that the environment in which research happens matters just as much.
In our lab, we try to create a culture where curiosity is encouraged, ideas can be discussed openly and students feel comfortable asking bold questions. Over time, that shared culture shapes how we approach scientific problems and how we collaborate with each other.
For me, one of the most rewarding aspects of academic life is seeing students grow into confident and independent researchers. Watching that transformation happen is something I value even more than any single publication.
What’s the most common misconception about your work?
When you work across disciplines, misconceptions are almost inevitable, and that is a natural part of interdisciplinary research. My work sits at the intersection of psychology, neuroscience, engineering and robotics, and I tend to think that the boundaries between these fields are often more artificial than real.
Because the audience for this kind of research is quite broad, people sometimes try to interpret the work through the conventions of a single discipline. However, interdisciplinary research often combines questions, methods and perspectives that do not fully belong to any one field.
In that sense, interdisciplinary work can sometimes look unusual from the perspective of any single discipline. But that is also where many interesting ideas emerge, when different fields begin to inform and challenge each other.
What has been the most exciting moment of your career so far? Could you share a turning point or defining moment in your career?
One of the most defining moments of my career was the day I started my position as a faculty member at Bilkent University and began building my own research lab. I remember the date very clearly: September 3, 2018.
Starting my lab as an independent principal investigator was both exciting and slightly overwhelming. It was the moment when ideas that had previously existed only as plans or dreams could finally begin to take shape as real research projects.
Looking back, that day marked the beginning of a new chapter, not only in pursuing my own research questions, but also in building a scientific community around those questions. Being able to work with students, mentor young researchers and grow a collaborative lab environment has become one of the most meaningful parts of my career.
What’s one piece of information from your field that you think everyone should know?
One of the most fascinating insights from cognitive neuroscience is that our brains do not simply capture reality, they construct it.
The brain constantly interprets sensory signals, combines them with past experiences and expectations and builds the perceptual world we experience. What we perceive as reality is therefore not a direct copy of the external world, but the brain’s best interpretation of it.
Understanding this idea can be quite powerful, because it reminds us that perception is always an active and dynamic process.
If you weren’t an academic, what career would you choose?
I would probably choose a career related to music, perhaps as a musician or an audio engineer. I have always been fascinated by sound and the emotional and perceptual experiences it can create.
Interestingly, this interest has also influenced my research. In some of our projects, we study immersive sound environments and how spatially organized sound shapes human perception and experience. In a way, these projects allow me to combine my scientific curiosity with my long-standing interest in music and sound.
If you had unlimited funds, what would you like to do research on?
If resources were unlimited, I would focus on building research environments that allow us to study the brain in situations that resemble real life much more closely. Much of what we know about the brain comes from highly controlled laboratory experiments, which are extremely valuable, but real-world experiences are far more dynamic and complex.
I would love to develop large-scale experimental settings where we could study perception, action and social interaction as they naturally occur, bringing together neuroscience, robotics, immersive technologies and design. Such environments would allow us to investigate how the brain processes rich sensory experiences and interacts with both humans and intelligent machines.
A research program like this would require truly interdisciplinary collaboration between scientists, engineers, designers and artists. I believe that studying the brain in more naturalistic and interactive environments will be one of the most exciting frontiers of neuroscience in the coming years. In fact, this is very much the direction I am trying to move my research toward today.
What do you like the most about being at Bilkent?
What I appreciate most about being at Bilkent is the intellectually stimulating environment and the strong openness to interdisciplinary collaboration. The university brings together researchers from many different fields, which creates exciting opportunities for new ideas and collaborations to emerge.
In my own work, I have had the chance to collaborate with colleagues from many disciplines, which has enriched my research in many ways.
I also greatly enjoy working with highly motivated and curious students. Their questions and perspectives make both teaching and research incredibly rewarding.
Overall, Bilkent offers a vibrant academic environment where curiosity-driven research and interdisciplinary thinking are strongly encouraged, and that is something I truly value.
What do you like to do when you are not working?
When I am not working, I enjoy spending time with music. I love listening to different kinds of music, discovering new artists and occasionally playing guitar.
I also enjoy reading, especially non-fiction books related to psychology, science and human behavior. These often spark new ideas and perspectives that sometimes even find their way back into my research.
Whenever I can, I like to go for long walks, which is a great way for me to clear my mind and think through ideas. And of course, I really enjoy spending time socializing with close friends and family; good conversations and shared moments are always refreshing.
Which books have influenced you the most, and why?
Two books that have influenced me deeply are The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke and Existential Psychotherapy by Irvin D. Yalom.
Rilke’s book has always fascinated me for its introspective and poetic reflections on human experience. It encourages the reader to observe the inner world with great sensitivity and depth.
Yalom’s work, on the other hand, explores fundamental existential questions such as meaning, freedom, responsibility and the challenges of being human. Reading it has influenced the way I think about psychology and human experience more broadly.
What is the secret of leading a happy life?
For me, one of the most important ingredients of a happy life is having the opportunity to pursue something you genuinely feel passionate about. When you care deeply about what you do, even the challenges along the way become meaningful parts of the journey.
Equally important is being surrounded by positive, supportive people who encourage you and help you grow. The people we spend time with shape our energy, our perspective and often our sense of possibility.
In the end, happiness is not only about circumstances, but about finding meaning in what you do and sharing that journey with the right people.
If you could go back to your undergraduate/graduate student years, what advice would you give to your younger self?
I would probably tell myself not to worry so much and to trust my curiosity and passion a little more. When you are a student, it is easy to feel uncertain about the future and to overthink every decision.
Looking back, I realize that following the questions and topics that genuinely excited me was often the right guide. Curiosity has a way of leading you in meaningful directions, even if the path is not always perfectly clear.
So my advice would be simple: be patient with yourself, trust your passion and allow curiosity to guide your journey.
Can you share a student interaction that has stayed with you over the years?
There have actually been many meaningful moments with my students, because in many ways I see our lab as an academic family. But if I had to share one type of interaction that has stayed with me, it is when students visit me together with their families before they leave the lab after completing their studies.
On several occasions, students have come to introduce me to their parents, and hearing kind and appreciative words from their families has been incredibly touching. Experiences like this are something you might expect in earlier stages of education, such as middle or high school, but they are quite rare at the university level.
For me, these moments are a reminder that mentorship in academia can go beyond teaching and research. It can also be about building meaningful human connections.
What is one piece of advice you wish every Bilkent student would truly follow?
My advice would be to make full use of the incredible resources that Bilkent offers. Engage with your professors, spend time in the library, join student clubs and take advantage of the many intellectual and social opportunities available on campus.
University is not only about preparing for a future job. It is also a unique time to explore ideas, discover new interests and develop your own perspective on the world.
If students actively engage with the people and opportunities around them, they can leave Bilkent not only with a degree but also with a much richer understanding of themselves and the world. Universities do not only train professionals, they help shape thoughtful, curious and globally minded individuals.
