Turkish junior scientist has roaring success in US

Beyazıt Şenbük - ISTANBUL

A 22-year-old Turkish university student, having numerous achievements in the field of physics during her years at Princeton University, is now preparing to carry on her studies at Fermilab and Argonne National Laboratories at the University of Chicago.

İnci Karaaslan made her way to the one of the most prestigious universities in the U.S., Princeton University, after her graduation from Üsküdar American High School as she took an eager interest in physics and mathematics in her last year in high school.

Karaaslan earned a bachelor’s in physics with a double minor in the departments of Physics Engineering and Applied and Computational Mathematics, graduating with honors this year.

Ranking among the most successful 25 Turkish graduates in the U.S. this year, Karaaslan developed projects for CERN on particle interactions and jets along with taking part in NASA's Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) project team during her years at the university.

Karaaslan, having written her graduation thesis on the artificial intelligence algorithms she developed to detect interactions after collisions at CERN, earned the Best Physics Engineering Independent Study Award.

Setting her eyes on new achievements in the fields of physics and mathematics after her graduation, the junior scientist will proceed with the University of Chicago to work at Fermilab, known as the CERN of the U.S., and Argonne National Laboratories, which has one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world.

The junior scientist has emphasized her desire to win a Nobel prize in the future, stating, “I realized that there is no woman among our school's Nobel Prize-winning physicists. It would be nice to see a woman among those people, I thought maybe this woman would be me.”