Introducing Furkan Ozturk
Meet Furkan Ozturk, our newest affiliated faculty.
Where are you from? I grew up in a small town called Trabzon in Turkey, right on the Black Sea. I was raised by my parents, both of whom were medical doctors, and my grandparents.
Describe the first time you made a personal connection with physics. At age 13, I saw an advertisement for a summer camp on astronomy. As I read more about the camp, I learned about stars and galaxies for the first time. I was struck by how different the universe is from our daily lives and how small we are in comparison. I remember learning that if someone was looking at Earth from the Andromeda galaxy, they would see Earth from a few million years ago. I was fascinated by the fact that they would actually be seeing the past because the universe is so big. I immediately asked my parents for a telescope. I printed out catalogs of stellar objects and created a lab notebook. I would spend hours looking through the telescope and noting down my observations.
How did you end up applying to a PhD? After my hours with the telescope, I realized I really loved science and was able to go to a specialized science high school. I had great teachers and kept asking questions out of curiosity. Eventually, they gave me access to the physics lab where I would spend a lot of time and I realized I could do this as a job. From there, I was accepted to the top physics program in Ankara, Turkey where I encountered wonderful professors. It gave me self-confidence and pride to be good at physics, since I wasn't good at other things. But I always wanted to learn everything, so I took a lot of other courses in math and engineering and art. My undergrad advisor did his PhD at MIT and so I assumed that was the path forward. In my third summer of university, I did an internship at Harvard. I spent the summer doing experiments for the first time and got interesting results. They offered for me to return to do a PhD, which is how I ended up at Harvard.
Who inspired you? Each person has a certain outstanding character that makes them interesting to me and it changes over time. As a high school student, I loved reading "Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman" and "What do you care what other people think" by Feynman because of how much fun he had asking questions in physics. I would also read about Caltech and watch the Big Bang Theory tv show. In university, I remember studying from Caltech professor Tom Apostol's calculus textbook. Later in graduate school, Venkat Ramakrishnan, the winner of the Nobel Prize for the structure of the ribosome, visited campus and I had the chance to meet him. It was really inspiring and it gave me the confidence to change fields. Reading about Frances Crick, the winner of the Nobel Prize for the structure of DNA, had the same effect. Most recently, I was very inspired by Katalin Karikó, the Nobel prize winner for the mRNA vaccine. She was rejected tenure and desk rejected from journals for the same research that ultimately won her the Nobel Prize. Despite that, she continued with her research. I find that type of grit and passion so inspiring.
What is a favorite moment in your research so far? My favorite moments are whenever I get to see an unexpected experimental result. In graduate school, I first worked on the problem of homochirality using a theoretical approach, which led me to propose a test experiment. If the experiment worked, it would answer a profound question, first raised by Louis Pasteur 175 years ago. I travelled to several countries to conduct the experiments and they didn't really work. Suddenly, after years of effort, we found the right experimental conditions. I was doing experiments at Harvard, crystallizing RNA on magnetic surfaces. And I remember the moment we finally put these molecules on magnetite and how the crystal structure visually changed.
What advice do you have for someone who wants the same career path? It's very important to remain curious and focus on good work. In the beginning of my PhD, I was getting results and wanted people to recognize it. And now I have learned that recognition may or may not happen but it is important not to expect something external. If you just focus on what you like to do, recognition will come. The most important thing is to remain original. Make your own mistakes. Create your own path. Follow your own dreams. This requires both delusional confidence to pursue something completely new and the humility to keep learning and recognize mistakes. It may seem paradoxical but you need both.
What was the hardest part of graduate school for you? The hardest part of graduate school was finding the right problem. After all the classes and imposter syndrome and adjusting to a new country, you have to decide: what is your contribution to science? And pursue it till it works, assuming it'll work out before it works out. That uncertainty, which lasts months or years, is the hardest part. At the same time, without that effort, it won't work out.
Have you experienced any cultural shocks since coming to the US? In Turkey, things are more hierarchical. Typically, you don't speak up in front of your advisor in group meeting. During my first internship in the US, one of the grad students put his legs up on the table while talking to his advisor. I was pretty alarmed but the professor didn't seem to care. He would have gotten slapped in turkey. Something else that's different but that I love is how much different people from different cultures and backgrounds bring something new to the research environment in the US. In Turkey, everyone comes from the same education. You know exactly what your peer knows. In the US, there is a lot more original information that your colleagues bring to the discussion.