Prof. ZİHNİ DEMİRBAĞ

Biography

He was born in a village at Eastern Anatolia region of Turkey, Elazig, in 1959. After growing up in that village, he had completed his elementary school in the same place. Then, he moved to Elazig for rest of his education. He started his higher education (biology) at Firat University in his hometown, Elazig in 1981. In 1981-1986 he had been trained as a biologist, then, he moved to Northern region of Turkey, Trabzon where he is still living now to work as Research Assistant at Karadeniz Technical University (KTU). Unfortunately Turkey did not have significant resources for good training in research science at that time. Therefore, he went to the United States, Texas Tech University for his post graduate studies in 1988.  He worked very hard during his PhD studies between 1988 and 1993. Molecular virology was always a fascinating field for him to understand virus-host interaction at molecular level. He spent most of his carrier to study the pathogen (viruses, bacteria, and fungi) and host (various pest insects) interactions which is important to develop environmentally friendly bio pesticide and gene expression and gene therapy vectors.  After he returned from USA to Turkey in 1993, he had been struggling to establish an advance laboratory to continue his research and to train young scientists. He went abroad to update his scientific skills and to keep scientific contacts several times. Currently, he has a very good laboratory with modern equipment and more than 10 graduate students working on insect pathogens. In addition several official duties at KTU (The Chairman of Molecular Biotechnology division, The Member of Quality Control Committee, ECTS/DS Chancellor, Coordinator of International Relations, Advisor to the Rector), he has become the leader of several scientific activities in Turkey, including 43^rd Annual Meeting of Society for Invertebrate Pathology (2010, Chair), 1st EurAsian Congress on Molecular Biotechnology (2001, Chair), 1^st Entomopathogens and Microbial Control (2007, Chair), 1^st Molecular Biotechnology Spring School (2006, Chair), establishment Molecular Biotechnology graduate program. He married with Birsel Canan, and they have three children (Belemir, Taha and Atahan).