Meydan Lab

Sezen obtained her undergraduate degree in Pharmacy from Hacettepe University (Ankara, Turkey) and began her first research experience in the laboratory of Prof. Funda Nuray Yalcin on natural product chemistry. She moved to US for her graduate studies in the laboratory of Prof. Alexander Mankin and Prof. Nora Vázquez-Laslop, where she studied how bacteria makes two proteins from one gene. She specifically focused on novel translation events, such as internal translation initiation and programmed ribosomal frameshifting. Sezen then joined Dr. Nicholas Guydosh’s lab at the National Institutes of Health (NIDDK) to study the mechanisms of eukaryotic translation in yeast and human cells. During her postdoc, she discovered new pathways that can detect collided ribosomes and established a genome-wide sequencing technique to find their locations across the transcriptome. In her lab, she is excited to understand the role of collided ribosomes and other aspects of translation in cellular surveillance and diseases.

When not in lab, Sezen loves singing, she has been on the stage since early childhood. She also loves long distance running, calm hikes and yoga.