TÜBİTAK - Genetics Engineering and Biotechnology Institute of Turkey, Turkey
Description of organization
TÜBİTAK
TUBITAK, The Scientific & Technological Research Council of Turkey, is the leading governmental R&D organization having high-level institutes making research covering a wide range of S&T fields, i.e information and communication technologies, security, energy, genetics and biomolecular engineering, food and life sciences, materials, earth and marine sciences, chemistry, textile and metrology. TUBITAK is directly linked to the Ministry of Science, Industry and Technology and has been a key player in leading R&D and S&T activities in Turkey. Under the TUBITAK umbrella there exist 22 research institutes having expertise in emerging fields of fundamental science and applied research. TUBITAK is the national authority of science, technology and innovation not only responsible from making cut-edge research but also shaping the policies and strategies contributing to Turkey's future R&D and innovation. TUBITAK has prepared the Horizon 2023 initiative reflecting Turkey's research strategies and priority contributing to national investment and international collaboration strategy. With its position, TUBITAK is the public authority for defining thematic priority research fields and support public and private organizations within several funding mechanisms. Beyond its strategic role in defining and managing the research policies, TUBITAK also leads scientific actions in close coordination with universities, enterprises, non-profit organizations, end-users and other stakeholders. More than 4000 researchers, many of which have PHD or master degree, conduct research both in national and international level. TUBITAK institutes have been involved in more than 50 FP7 projects and more than 100 international projects including bilateral programmes, FP6, Eureka, CIP, IPA, NATO and NSF projects. Note that TUBITAK employs the national contact points responsible from FP7 thematic areas yielding access to a wide network of Turkish researchers in Turkey.
TÜBİTAK - GENETIC ENGINEERING AND BIOTECHNOLOGY INSTITUTE (GEBI)
GEBI was founded in 1983 as "Department of Biology" of "Research Institute for Basic Sciences" of "Gebze Research Centre of TUBITAK". In 1992, the Biology Department was reorganized as a separate research entity under the name of "Research Institute for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology" with the decision of TUBITAK Board of Governors. Currently, a total of 48 scientists are employed in GEBI laboratories.
Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology Institute is the only publicly funded research entity in Turkey, conducting cutting-edge research on the main topics of biotechnology. There are four basic research areas in biotechnology including medical biotechnology, plant biotechnology and agricultural research and bioenergy. Main mission of GEBI as the only national institute in Turkey specialized in biotechnology is to contribute to the national economic development. To reach these goals, in medical biology GEBI scientists are working on the different aspects of medical research such as finding the causes of aneurysmal diseases with different approaches including proteomics. Besides medical research, the finding solution of the problems of agriculture in Turkey with biotechnological approaches is another research area for GEBI scientists.
A recent next-generation sequencing facility together with up-to-date proteomics facility will give a boost to the standing of the research capacity of the institute in all major areas of molecular biology. The bioinformatics team conducted to support this facility includes scientists from areas such as mathematics, electronics, and computer science with an active focus on computational challenges in next-gen sequencing applications.
TÜBİTAK - BILGEM
BILGEM, an affiliate of the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK), produces and applies scientific and technological solutions with its qualified human resources and internationally accepted infrastructure in the areas of information security, communications and advanced electronics. Under BILGEM, there exist 3 institutes: National Research Institute of Electronics and Cryptology (UEKAE), Information Technologies Institute (BTE) and Research Institute of Fundamental Sciences (TBAE). BILGEM works on joint projects together with private sector companies and government authorities by utilizing the TEMPEST, Multimedia Technologies, Telecommunications, Common Criteria and Cryptographic Algorithm Design and Test Centers, Informatics and Trustworthy Future Internet, Embedded Design and Product Development, Electronic Warfare, Microelectronics and Optoelectronics departments. The employees of BILGEM, 76% of which consists of researchers, have all adopted the common ideal of "Becoming an international technology and production center that pioneers the development of new technologies in communications and advanced electronics areas". BILGEM contributes to universal science by incorporating the universities into the ongoing projects and encouraging its researchers for academic career development opportunities. The BILGEM staff has been involved in major European research projects, among them: Open_TC, EURACE, SCARD, tOSSad, CADRES, ICE, MULTISAUND, Syssec, PriBioSec and BEAR. BILGEM can significantly contribute to ITFoM (but not limited to) in the fields of optoelectronics including medical imaging and hyper-spectral imaging, privacy and security of virtual patients, machine learning and artificial intelligence to analyze and mine large amount of heterogeneous medical data, semantic technologies to extract valuable information from the medical content and forecast the future trends, and human-machine interface through advanced communication utilities.
TÜBİTAK - MAM - Food Institute
The Food Institute (FI) operating under MRC has a long history dating back to its foundation in 1971. The major area of activity of FI is to conduct research projects concerning all aspects of nutritional sciences. Among the numerous expertise areas, the NMR spectroscopy group is dynamically involved in various NMR-related (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) projects. For instance, through the EC funded FP7 projects "EAST-NMR" and "BioNMR", the group has direct links to the leading European NMR laboratories/community and, thereby, cutting-edge know-how. With the present infrastructure featuring a well-suited series of instruments i.e. 400, 500 and 600 MHz NMR systems equipped with diverse probe heads for solution state, the group can undertake responsibilities in the frame of metabol(n)omics, supramolecular interactions, quantitative NMR (quality control of medicinal active substances), structural analysis of biomolecules. Connected to these interest areas and capabilities, the NMR group would be valuable considering the fact that there will be a huge demand for NMR spectroscopy work in line with the ambition of ITFoM project to integrate and create available biological data and computational models of the biological processes.