Prof. Ozlem Tastan Bishop

Özlem received her BSc degree in Physics from Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey. Then she moved to the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the same university for her MSc degree. She obtained her PhD from the Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics and Free University, Berlin, Germany in 2003. While doing her PhD, Özlem became interested in structural biology, and during her postdoctoral positions (Texas University, USA; University of Western Cape and University of Pretoria, South Africa), she gained experience in structural bioinformatics as well as structural biology. In October 2009, Özlem took up an academic position at Rhodes University, South Africa. She initiated a one-year MSc program in bioinformatics that included coursework and a research thesis in 2011, which was the first such programme in Africa, and established the Research Unit in Bioinformatics (RUBi) in 2013. Since joining Rhodes University, Özlem has graduated 21 PhD students and over 40 MSc students. She has roughly 90 peer-reviewed articles in internationally accredited journals. Özlem’s broad research interest is structural bioinformatics and bioinformatics education.