Dr. Ay\u00e7a Arslan of the National Nanotechnology Research Center (UNAM) received an award from the Science and Society Directorate of the Scientific and Technological Research Council of T\u00fcrkiye (T\u00dcB\u0130TAK) for her leadership of the \u201cMy DNA Summer School\u201d project. The award was second prize in the \u201c4004 \u2013 Nature Applications Encouragement Award\u201d category of the Science and Society Support Programs Project Encouragement Awards, held for the first time this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Held at UNAM from August 15 to 22, 2022, the \u201cMy DNA Summer School\u201d brought together 60 female students in the 9th and 10th grades who showed scientific potential but faced socioeconomic disadvantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The project aimed to encourage greater participation of young women in science and technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Led by Dr. Arslan and a team of UNAM graduate researchers, the program gave students hands-on experience in isolating their own DNA, staining bacteria, observing living organisms under microscopes and modeling proteins with bioinformatics tools. Students also took part in experiments, presentations and scientific competitions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To assess the project’s long-term impact, the team reconnected with participants in September 2026. According to the follow-up, 84 percent of those reached had gone on to undergraduate study in health sciences, basic sciences or engineering and were enrolled in degree programs in these fields.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dr. Ay\u00e7a Arslan of the National Nanotechnology Research Center (UNAM) received an award from the Science and Society Directorate of the Scientific and Technological Research Council of T\u00fcrkiye (T\u00dcB\u0130TAK) for her leadership of the \u201cMy DNA Summer School\u201d project. The award was second prize in the \u201c4004 \u2013 Nature Applications[Read More…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11613,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[231,12,224],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bilkentnews.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11595"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bilkentnews.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bilkentnews.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bilkentnews.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bilkentnews.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11595"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bilkentnews.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11596,"href":"https:\/\/bilkentnews.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11595\/revisions\/11596"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bilkentnews.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bilkentnews.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bilkentnews.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bilkentnews.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}