On 3rd October, Professor of High Physics of Middle East Technical University (Ankara), Dr. Bilge Demirkoz, gave a lecture on “Center for Space Radiation Research in Turkey: Collaboration with CERN” for teachers, scientists and students of the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute.
Bilge Demirkoz was born in Istanbul. In 2001, she received a bachelor’s degree in physics at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (USA). In 2007, she got PhD at the University of Oxford (UK) with her work about the development of the design of space beam detectors. She worked at CERN (Switzerland) and the Institute of High Energy Physics (Institut de Fisica d'Altes Energies, IFAE) in Barcelona (Spain). Since 2011, she has been heading the Experimental Laboratory of Space Radiation and Astroparticle Physics of the Meddle East Technical University. In 2015, she was elected to the Turkish Academy of Sciences. In 2017, she won the L’Oreal-UNESCO International Prize for Women in Science.
In her lecture, Bilge Demirkoz briefly described the discovery of the space beams, the history and the main findings of their research. She further described the fundamental and applied research, performed by her team. Basic research is conducted as part of an international team that processes data from the AMS-02 (Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer). The AMS-02 is in Earth orbit, the International Space Station, and is designed to study cosmic rays and search for dark matter signals. Applied research is concerned with the effects of radiation on materials and devices used in Turkish spacecraft.
The lecture was delivered in English and was accompanied by the demonstration of numerous slides showing both the experimental equipment and the results of the research.
After the lecture, Bilge Demirkoz answered the students' questions.
Finally, we should note that the lecture was sponsored by the Turkish Center named after Yunus Emre in Kiev at the Embassy of the Turkish Republic in Ukraine.