Returning Home: A New Chapter in Semahat Demir’s Career

Having spent the majority of her professional career in the United States, Semahat Demir now embarks on a new adventure—a return to the country she left 23 years ago to lead Istanbul Kültür University (IKU), Turkey. She has built legacies in academia, industry, government, and science diplomacy through more than 130 journal publications in computational bioengineering, her work building a multiscale modeling funding program and directing US$290 million in annual grant funding for 200 projects at the National Science Foundation (NSF), her career-long dedication to providing opportunities for women engineers, and most recently her efforts to foster collaborative research efforts between the United States and Turkey. With her return home, she completes a circle, reverses her diaspora, and at the same time becomes a larger part of an effort to bring science to the global community.