Dr. Yunus Emre 
Türkmen Assistant Professor Bilkent University Department of Chemistry 06800, Ankara, Turkey yeturkmen@gmail.com yeturkmen@bilkent.edu.tr
Yunus Türkmen was born in Inegöl (Bursa), Turkey in 1983. His interest and passion for chemistry grew substantially at the 8th grade when he was trained by his chemistry teacher, Kadir Çelik for the National Chemistry Olympiad (organized by Tubitak) at Bursa Anatolian High School. He then moved to Izmir to study at Izmir Science High School where he would live for three years. During this time, Yunus won one bronze (1999) and one gold medal (2000) in the National Chemistry Olympiads, as well as two gold medals (2000, Copenhagen/Denmark and 2001, Mumbai/India) in the International Chemistry Olympiads (ICHO) as a member of the Turkish national team. Subsequently, being ranked 90th in the ÖSS National University Entrance Exam among over 1.5 million participants, he decided to study Chemistry at Middle East Technical University (METU).
Yunus graduated from the Chemistry Department of METU in 3.5 years as a High Honor student along with the completion of a minor program in Biology. In summer 2004, he spent three months in Toulouse, France as a visiting student where he worked on bimetallic complexes of titanium and hafnium under the supervision of Prof. Rinaldo Poli at Laboratoire de Chimie de Coordination. He also worked with Prof. Cihangir Tanyeli and Prof. Idris Akhmedov in an undergraduate research project and as a M.Sc. student (2003-2006). After receiving his M.Sc. degree in Chemistry from METU, Yunus moved to Chicago in 2006.
As a Ph.D. student at the Chemistry Department of the University of Chicago, he worked with Prof. Viresh Rawal on a number of projects including natural product total synthesis, hydrogen bonding catalysis and cycloaddition reactions of 1,2-diazines with siloxy alkynes. Yunus received his Ph.D. degree in Organic Chemistry from the University of Chicago in 2012 and after a brief postdoctoral work in the same research group, he moved to Bristol, United Kingdom. Between 2013-2014, he worked as a postdoctoral research associate with Prof. Varinder Aggarwal FRS at University of Bristol on the total synthesis of the indole alkaloid, α-cyclopiazonic acid. Yunus is currently an assistant professor at the Chemistry Department of Bilkent University.
In addition, Yunus is highly interested in Turkish and world literature, collecting second-hand (mildly scarce) books and hiking. Alberto Manguel, Alain de Botton, Italo Calvino, Alejandro Zambra, Roberto Bolaño, Albert Camus, Oğuz Atay, Bilge Karasu, Tezer Özlü, Ferit Edgü, Tomris Uyar, Mehmet Günsur ve Barış Bıçakçı are among his favorite authors. He is also fascinated with the books published by two great publishing houses, the Folio Society and Seagull Books.
