Fatma Uzbas

Fatma Uzbas is a postdoctoral researcher at the Language and Genetics Department of Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (Nijmegen, Netherlands).

Fatma obtained her Bachelor's degree in Molecular Biology and Genetics at Bilkent University (Ankara), and Master's degree in Biological Sciences and Bioengineering at Sabanci University (Istanbul), Turkiye. Her passion for stem cells brought her to Helmholtz Munich (Germany) for the Ph.D. studies, where she worked with human pluripotent stem cells and co-developed a novel barcoding method (BART-Seq) for targeted sequencing of single cells and bulk RNA/DNA samples. She joined Prof. Magdalena Goetz' group for her postdoctoral research, to work on the spatio-temporal regulation of protein composition of the centrosome during brain development.

Her interest in the emergence of a speech-ready brain during evolution as well as during the development of an individual brought her to the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in 2024. Her present research interest lies in studying the genes whose disruption causes disorders that affect the acquisition or articulation of speech. By leveraging the potential of 3D cerebral organoids, she intends to model how such genetic disturbances impact human brain development.

Starting with a full-scholarship during Bachelor's degree at the Bilkent University, Fatma received several grants and scholarships including HHMI, TUBITAK, ERASMUS, and DAAD throughout her research journey.