BIOGRAPHY

Özgür Müstecaplıoğlu was born on March 20, 1971 in Istanbul, Turkey. He graduated Izmit High School in 1988. He received full scholarship from Bilkent university electronics department after being in the top ten students in the nationwide (about more than 600 000 students) university entrance exam in 1988. He changed his carrier into physics in 1992, when Bilkent University Physics Department has opened an undergraduate program. He received his Ph.D.  from the same department in 1999 on quantum optics under the supervision of Prof. Alexander Shumovsky.

He received Turkish National Science and Technology Foundation Award for a visiting researcher program for outstanding Ph.D. students in 1999 and visited University of Toronto to do research on photonic band gap materials in Prof. Sajeev John’s research group. He had worked in Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics group of Georgia Institute of Technology as a research scholar in 1999–2002. He joined Koç University in 2002, where he is currently working as an associate professor.

He received title of “Doçent” from Turkish Higher Education Council (Yüksek Öğrenim Kurumu, YÖK) on May 2005. He received the 2004 Distinguished Young Scientist Award of Turkish Academy of Sciences (TÜBA-GEBİP) and the 2007 TÜBİTAK (Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey) Encouragement Award. He is the vice-president of International Commission for Optics, Turkey Chapter.

His research involves theoretical studies in interdisciplinary areas covering quantum optics, optical properties of semiconductors, foundations of quantum electrodynamics, atomic Bose-Einstein condensates, quantum information science and technology and nonlinear optics. He has 30+ invited talks. He is a referee for Physical Review A, B and Physical Review Letters. He has published 40+ articles in leading journals, including Physical Review Letters, Applied Physics Letters, Optics Letters, and Physical Review A rapid communications. One of his papers has been appeared at a cover of Physical Review Letters. Six of his papers were selected for Virtual Journals of Quantum Information and Nanoscience. Özgür Müstecaplıoğlu is a member of APS (American Physical Society), EPS (European Physical Society), TFD (Turkish Physical Society), OSA (Optical Society of America) and SPIE (The International Society of Optical Engineering).