Speakers » Bilge Demirköz

Bilge Demirköz is a TED Fellow and a Turkish particle physicist who is making significant contributions to our understanding of the universe we live in. In her experiments and her role as a faculty member of Middle East Technical University in Ankara, she inspires the next generation of scientists and makes science more accessible to the general public. Through her work searching for anti-matter and dark matter in space and her many years conducting particle physics experiments at CERN, Dr. Demirköz has come to believe that science needs to re-connect with the arts, and ultimately, with people.

Dr. Demirköz graduated from MIT with a major in physics and minors in mathematics and music. Continuing her graduate studies at MIT, she worked on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer experiment, which searches for anti-matter and dark matter signatures in space. This experiment was installed on the International Space Station in May of 2011. Armed with a D.Phil. from Oxford University, where she worked on the CERN ATLAS experiment, Dr. Demirköz continued her post-doctoral studies with Cambridge University and IFAE Barcelona. After 14 years abroad, she has recently returned to her home in Turkey to teach. Dr. Demirköz was awarded a prestigious TED Fellowship in 2011, and in 2004 she carried the Olympic flame for her country.

Bilge’s website: http://demirkoz.web.cern.ch/demirkoz/