Koç University Neuroscience PHD program was founded in 2014 and accepted its first PHD students in 2015. This neuroscience program brings together 43 faculty members from different academic backgrounds and disciplines and bridges core areas of neuroscience as Molecular, Developmental, Cellular, Systems, Cognitive, Computational and Clinical, to create a vigorous research program, address the broad areas encompassed by modern neuroscience and to help understanding how our precious ‘Brain’ works.

Our mission is to provide students a flexible, nourished and competitive research environment so as to be one of the top leading and internationally respected neuroscience PHD programs on the world, to produce pioneer work and to train our students as leaders both in teaching and research. Students from different backgrounds are encouraged to apply for the program and each year, successful applicants with strong achievements are accepted after a rigourous interview. We aim to train our students with a strong general background in neuroscience and to lead them to specialize in a specific core area.  For this aim, students are expected to take core and advanced neuroscience courses in addition to related courses of other graduate programs. Being a part of ongoing research and an active member of laboratory staff is expected from the first day of admission to the program. Our faculty members support any collaboration and interact closely with other faculty members and students to create a multi-disciplinary impact.  Many of the courses are given as coordinated-teaching by different faculty members.

Current research ranges from molecular mechanisms of central nervous system tumors, the molecular mechanisms of reprogramming and identifying genes that are important for iPS cell generation, epigenetics, protein-protein interactions and protein structure-function dynamics, targeted drug delivery, the synaptic inputs from receptors to motor neurons that innervate human muscles, cognitive models of memory, decision making and comprehension, modeling neuronal circuits, signal transduction in neural systems and the neurobiology of psychiatric and neurological disorders.

The physically home base of the program is located at Rumelifeneri Campus of Koç University and most coursework occurs at this campus, however Koç University Hospital is also another setting, where additional neuroimaging laboratories, research animal laboratories, cell culture laboratories and molecular biology laboratories are settled and some faculty members of School of Medicine are currently positioned. Koç University Neuroscience PHD program offers a variety of courses and diverse laboratory opportunities that helps to increase collaborations and to provide the students many different research experiences.

We are looking forward to walking through the excellence with our team and new students.

Neuroscience PHD program Coordinators

Yasemin Gürsoy-Özdemir, MD PHD
Hale Yapıcı Eser, MD PHD