Tugba N. Ozturk grew up in a village in the suburbs of Izmit, about two hours from Istanbul. Her parents were both nurses who had trained at a vocational health high school rather than university. They wanted their daughter to earn a degree that would lead to a stable career. When she told them she wanted to study physics, they were unsettled.

“They were very discouraged—a bit frightened—when I told them that I wanted to study physics,” she recalls. “They did not think that it was a good idea, but eventually they supported me and let me follow my gut.”

She went on to complete a bachelor’s degree in physics engineering at Istanbul Technical University, followed by a master’s in computational sciences and engineering at Koç University in Istanbul. For her doctorate, she attended Con­cordia University in Montreal, Canada, where she earned a PhD in physics under the supervision of Guillaume Lamoureux. Along the way, she picked up a graduate certificate in univer­sity teaching and spent a summer semester teaching under­graduate mechanics.

Her pivot toward biophysics was shaped significantly by two mentors. Lamoureux, who shared her physics background, gave her the latitude to figure out what kinds of biological problems excited her. Midway through her PhD program, she began collaborating with Janet Wood at the University of Guelph, whose expertise in biochemistry expanded her scien­tific thinking.

“She taught me so much biochemistry and sparked my inter­est in lipids,” Ozturk says of Wood. “She is a true role model.” Of both Lamoureux and Wood, she adds, “I think it is fair to say that both Guillaume and Janet got me started in this area and have helped me grow as a scientist through their mentor­ship, support, and rigor.”

After obtaining her PhD, Ozturk completed postdoctoral work at Washington University in St. Louis before joining the Biosciences and Biotechnology Division at LLNL, where she benefited from the lab’s structured career development pro­gramming. In January 2024, she transitioned to her current role as a Research Staff Scientist in LLNL’s Biochemical and Biophysical Systems Group. Her research sits at the intersec­tion of computational modeling and membrane biology— exactly where she always wanted to be.

Ozturk uses multiscale molecular dynamics simulations to investigate how lipids modulate the way proteins interact with membranes. One current project focuses on bacterial lipids with unusual tail length asymmetry, examining how these molecules alter the structural properties, elasticity, and permeability of mammalian membranes.

What draws her to this corner of biology is its complexity and unsolved questions. Biological membranes contain thou­sands of distinct lipid species, and scientists still don’t fully understand why. “I hope to continue contributing to our

understanding of why nature evolved to maintain thousands of different lipid species in biological membranes, and how these lipids can regulate the structure, function, and complex formation of proteins at or near the membrane,” she says.

She’s watching the field accelerate with genuine excite­ment, pointing to advances in lipidomics, high-resolution microscopy techniques like the Lipid-CLEM (correlative light and electron microscopy) workflow, and improvements in coarse-grained molecular modeling as tools that are letting researchers finally probe the regulatory roles of lipids with new precision.

As a first-generation scientist from a developing country, Ozturk is candid about the challenges of navigating a career path without a roadmap. The biggest difficulty, she says, wasn’t any single technical obstacle—it was simply not knowing how things worked.

“My biggest challenge has been ‘figuring out’ things,” she explains. “I had lots of moments where something finally clicked. I had to figure out what courses I needed to take in or­der to learn what I wanted to learn, figure out how to apply to graduate school, and learn how to ask for help and mentoring from experts. To face these challenges, I learned to become resilient and simply kept trying.”

That resilience, combined with a network of mentors and community she built along the way, has been central to her development. The Biophysical Society has played a notable role in that network. She recalls her first BPS Annual Meeting as a turning point. “It was the first time I felt like I belonged to a community as a scientist,” she says. “Seeing the breadth of biophysics research, the questions and suggestions I received while presenting my poster, the friends I met—the whole experience was motivating and eye-opening.”

Two small moments at BPS meetings stand out to her as examples of how much a brief interaction can matter. Early in her PhD program, while presenting preliminary work and wrestling with self-doubt, Murali Prakriya stopped by her poster and offered encouragement through his questions and feedback. At another meeting, a conversation with Medha Pathak about career trajectories gave her the perspective she needed during a difficult decision. “She does not know this,” Ozturk notes, “but that conversation along with her perspec­tive and advice inspired me to make the right decision for myself at a troubling time.”

For the last few years, she has been an active volunteer, serving on various committees, co-organizing The Biophysicist webinar series from 2021 to 2023, and moderating ses­sions on topics ranging from Bayesian inference to artificial intelligence in biophysics. Through that work, she has found collaborators and friends. “I find it rewarding that everything we study and understand has the potential to improve human life and health,” she says. “Also, I love the ‘A-ha!’ moments. Experiencing them is fun, but it is also rewarding to help oth­ers to have those moments.”

To young scientists just starting out, she offers two pieces of advice: keep reading, thinking, and writing as core intellectual habits, and genuinely enjoy the experience of being a scientist every day. “Use every opportunity you get to embrace chal­lenges, observe what you like as well as what you don’t like, and make decisions to advance yourself toward the challeng­es and experiences that you do like.” For those without men­tors readily at hand, she points directly to the BPS community as a place to find them.

When she’s not working, Ozturk bakes and reads, refining rec­ipes and working through books. She and her partner spend weekends in San Francisco, a city she describes with evident affection as “the most dog-friendly city, full of parks, book­stores, and restaurants.” In another life, she says, she might have been happy in a bakery or a bookstore.

For now, though, she’s doing what she set out to do: working at the intersection of all the things she loves, asking ques­tions that matter, and helping others find their footing along the way.