Department of Biological Sciences Middle East Technical University Ankara Türkiye
GROUP MEMBERS
Gülşah Merve Kılınç
Assistant Professor @ the Dept of Biological Sciences
Gülşah is an evolutionary geneticist studying past human population history and the temporal dynamics of evolutionary processes. She received her PhD in Molecular Biology and Genetics from Bilkent University and conducted postdoctoral research at Middle East Technical University, Stockholm University, and Uppsala University. Her research integrates ancient DNA, population genetics, and computational approaches to investigate human evolutionary history.
Şevval Aktürk
PhD Student
Şevval is a PhD student. She graduated from the Dept of Molecular Biology and Genetics at METU and received her MSc at the same department on the topic of biological kinship. She currently works on ancient human genomics to study demography and selection processes in ancient Anatolia.
Ceyda Hop
MSc Student
Ceyda Hop graduated from the Dept of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Üsküdar University and began her MSc in October 2024. She is interested in studying selection in ancient human populations.
Begüm Karadaş
MSc Student
Begüm graduated from the Department of Biology at Hacettepe University in 2025 and joined the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at METU as an MSc student in October of the same year. Her MSc research lies at the intersection of ancient genomics, genotype imputation, haplotype-based methods, and selection inference, with the aim of exploring how these approaches can be integrated in the analysis of ancient genomes.
Alumni
Dila Nur Çakal, MSc, 2023-2025
Hande Çubukcu, MSc, 2022-2024
İdil Taç, MSc, 2020-2023
Visiting Students
2026 - Lal Derin Çokbankir, BSc Student — Summer Intern