About Us

Prof. Levent Kurnaz was born in Istanbul. He received his B.S. Degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering in 1988, his M.S. Degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering and his B.S. Degree in Physics in 1990 from Bogazici University, his M.S. Degree in Physics in 1991 and his Ph.D. Degree in Physics in 1994 from University of Pittsburgh. Between 1995 and 1997 he worked as a research associate at Department of Chemistry in Tulane University. In 1997 he joined Bogazici University Physics Department as an assistant professor. Since he has been a Professor of Physics at Bogazici University. In 2014 he has been appointed as the Director of the Center for Climate Change and Policy Studies at Bogazici University. Prof. Kurnaz has 1 international book and 32 scientific papers in international journals. He has been an advisor to 27 M.S. and 9 Ph.D. thesis ongoing and finished. He is married with two children.

Having graduated from Robert College in 1988, Zeynep Başaran, received her B.A. in Economics and English, Cum Laude and with Honors in English, from Bryn Mawr College in 1992. She received her M.A. in Advertising from the University of Texas at Austin in 1996. She worked in strategic planning and business development at the BBDO Group between 1992-1999. Between 1999 and 2010, she worked at Manajans/ JWT, where she was strategy planning director, VP strategic planning, and CEO, successively. During 2007-2009, she was concurrently the country manager of Diamond Trading Company (formerly De Beers). She gained  experience as an angel investor and within the start-up community between 2010-2013, after which she launched her consultancy business, focusing on brand positioning, creative strategy, campaign management, agency-client relations, and project management. She is an instructor at Bilgi University Marka Okulu (since 2011), Koç University (since 2013), and IMA (since 2016).

Aytaç Paçal completed his undergraduate studies in Physics at Boğaziçi University in 2015 after graduating from Şişli Anatolian High School in 2010.  He received M.Sc. degree in Computational Science and Engineering at Boğaziçi University. He is currently a researcher PhD student at DLR German Aerospace Center.

He believes the idea that the scientific knowledge should be simplified to be conveyed to people, otherwise scientific facts will not be enough to save the future of the Earth. With this idea in mind, he created a YouTube channel to create and publish videos about commonly misunderstood scientific topics.

In his graduate study, Mr. Paçal worked on the visualization of climate change data in Turkey and MENA (the Middle East and North Africa) region and analyzed the return periods of extreme weather events, under the supervision of Prof. M. Levent Kurnaz.

Burcu Yesil graduated from American Robert College in 2011 and finished the BA in Political Science and International Relations at Bogazici University in 2016. Burcu continued higher education in Scotland, where she acquired an MSc degree in Global Environmental Politics at the University of Edinburgh. Writing a master’s thesis on “the sustainable consumption of textiles in Turkey”, Burcu started working at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Istanbul as the Corporate Partnerships Officer.

Believing that for transitioning towards a healthy, sustainable planet and society; the humanity needs to work in cooperation on all levels, Burcu actively volunteers at various environmental charities in Istanbul. She is also among the founders of the Zero Waste Platform (Sıfır Çöp Platformu) in Turkey which aims to become an umbrella civil society organisation for those who wish to question the way we consume today make change for sustainable consumption and production methods.