Durmus Demir is a faculty at Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey. He obtained his Ph. D. in 1995 in Physics from Middle East Technical University, Turkey. Afterwards, he has held post-doctoral positions at the University of Pennsylvania (1996-97), at the ICTP (1998-2000) and at the TPI, University of Minnesota (2000–03). He joined Physics Department of Izmir Institute of Technology in 2003 and worked there until 2019. Demir has been working in particle physics (naturalness, dark matter, CMS experiment at CERN), gravitation (black holes and inflation in emergent gravity), and quantum physics (quantum tunneling time). His research is theoretical and phenomenological. He was Turkey’s representative at CERN’s Strategy Council Meeting in 2006. He was awarded by a number of national institutions. He is the first Turkish-citizen researcher to win the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award (2007). He is an OIC-COMSTECH Distinguished Scholar (2021). He is in the editorial board of Letters in High Energy Physics journal. He is a member of the CERN-CMS Exp., Science Academy- Istanbul, and TWAS MAC (Physics).

Prof. Mehmet Öztürk completed his undergraduate studies at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Gazi University (Turkey) and his PhD at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Paris XI University (France). He become Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School (USA), Research Director at INSERM (France) and Professor at Bilkent University (Turkey). His seminal research work is on genetic causes of human cancer, including inherited and carcinogen-induced genetic mutations causing childhood cancers and liver cancer, respectively. His high impact research, including over 100 articles, referenced more than 9100 times (H-factor: 44), and nearly 10 patents, have made him a world known scientist. Prof. Öztürk was presented with the ‘Cecile Cerveux Cancer Award’ in France. He also received ‘Golden Mortar Award’ and ‘TÜBİTAK-TWAS Science Award’ in Turkey. The Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics that he created at Bilkent University received ‘Vehbi Koç Award’. Prof. Öztürk is an elected member to several science academies including EMBO, TWAS and Turkish Academy of Sciences.