Introducing TASSA Board Members: Aydogan Ozcan

On behalf of the editorial team of TASSA, we are pleased to introduce the members of our Board of Directors, who have agreed to graciously share their thoughts on TASSA and its activities, as well as information about themselves with our readership.  In this issue we feature Aydoğan Özcan, the Chancellor's Professor at UCLAleading the Bio- and Nano-Photonics Laboratory at the Electrical Engineering and Bioengineering Departments.

We usually start our interview with questions about our guest's scientific journey.  Dr. Aydogan was interviewed by TRT on his research and career for "TESADÜF DEĞİL" program. Per his suggestion, we are sharing the link of this interview. You can reach it by clicking the following link and scrolling down to date, October 19th, 2015 "TESADÜF DEĞİL 4. BÖLÜM AYDOĞAN ÖZCAN" also available on Facebook page.

Dr. Aydogan also answered our additional questions about his involvement with TASSA.

The Bridge:   Would you please tell us about your involvement with TASSA, its importance to you, and your vision for the future of TASSA.

Aydogan Özcan:  I have been serving TASSA since 2012 as a member of the Board of Directors. I have also served as the Chair of the 2014 TASSA Conference. TASSA is our face, and it broadly represents all of us, Turkish American scholars and scientists, and I am proud of being a member of TASSA and its expanding and dynamic community. Its mission to establish scientific collaborations and scholarly programs between US and Turkey is extremely important and timely. In fact TASSA has been serving as the reference scientific organization representing Turkish American scholars in regards to new collaborative initiatives and discussions involving both the American and Turkish governments, and considering all the challenges that the Middle East is currently facing, these scholarly bridges that we aim to establish and strengthen between US and Turkey has never been this timely and important for setting role models for the region.

T. B. :  What, in your opinion, can be done to increase the collaboration and strengthen the bridge between scientists and scholars in Turkey and the Turkish-American scientists and scholar in the US? And how can TASSA, in your opinion, contribute to it?

A. Ö. :  I believe it is important to increase the endowment and annual budget of TASSA to a level where full-time equivalent (FTE) positions can be created to serve the broad mission and aims of TASSA. This is especially going to help sustainability of our impact and broaden the continuous reach of TASSA in both US and Turkey. As a community, we need to discuss practical and sustainable ways of achieving this endowment increase and also explore and brain-storm new functions and responsibilities that TASSA can officially undertake between the US and Turkish governments if it were to operate at a large scale with several FTEs. Another important agenda could be to strengthen and formalize the ties and relationships of TASSA with various Turkish Student Associations in US institutions. 

T. B. :  Are there any project that TASSA is undertaking that you are excited about and why?
A. Ö. : I am particularly excited about the TASSA Young Scholars Awards program that we have first established as part of the 2014 TASSA Conference in Maryland. It is extremely important that our community recognizes and honors emerging young scholars at various different stages of their careers, including graduate students, post-doctoral researchers, and junior faculty. Following an extremely successful launch in 2014, we have recently announced the 2nd TASSA Young Scholars Award program to recognize the achievements of young Turkish American scholars. I would like to encourage everyone to nominate talented Turkish American scholars for these prestigious awards and would like to remind that the nomination deadline is February 1, 2016.  Self nominations are also permitted, and the readers can find more information about the details of the nomination process in this newsletter.