FAMOUS TURKISH WOMEN

EREN ÖZMEN

Entrepreneurial and humanitarian – Eren Ozmen embodies an inspiring American Dream story, bringing her passion and determination first to the United States and then to build one of “The World’s Top 10 Most Innovative Companies,” including to space with SNC’s Dream Chaser® program. With gratitude, Eren is focused on paying forward her success to benefit America’s next generation of entrepreneurs with similarly big dreams and aspirations.

Eren joined Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) in 1988, shortly after receiving her MBA from the University of Nevada, Reno. With the same boundless energy and dreams they brought to the U.S. from Turkey as college students, Eren and her husband Fatih Ozmen acquired SNC in 1994. As sole owners, they launched plans to expand the company. The Ozmens’ strategic leadership—including targeted acquisitions, disciplined financial and technical management, and an unwavering focus on integrity—resulted in SNC’s growth from a small firm of 20 employees into one of the top woman-owned federal contractors in the United States. Today SNC is a team of more than 3,000 people in 33 locations in 19 U.S. states, England, Germany, and Turkey.

Driven to dream, innovate and inspire, Eren and Fatih have steered SNC to expand in new and promising directions, including 19 acquisitions. The entire SNC team is committed to customer-centricity, surpassing the status quo, and entrepreneurial thinking.

Not one to rest on previous success, Eren is always looking ahead with optimism and energy—continuously improving, adapting, and innovating to creatively build toward the next challenge. She is actively involved in all key aspects of SNC’s business management and prioritizes healthy work-life policies. Under her leadership, SNC has received numerous awards for innovation, growth, and employee satisfaction.

Eren’s vision for making a positive impact extends beyond the walls of the company. The Ozmens founded the Ozmen Center for Entrepreneurship in 2014. Based at the University of Nevada, Reno, the Center fosters collaboration across varied disciplines and geographies. The Ozmens received honorary doctorate degrees from the University of Nevada, Reno, in 2016.

BANU ONARAL

Banu Onaral is H. H. Sun Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Electrical Engineering at Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA. She received her BS and MS in Electrical Engineering from Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey, in 1973 and 1974, respectively, and earned her PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978. Dr. Onaral joined the faculty of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Biomedical Engineering and Science Institute at Drexel University in 1981. Starting in 1995, she led the strategic planning to transform the Biomedical Engineering and Science Institute into a university-level interdisciplinary school. She served as the Founding Director of the School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems since its creation in 1997 to 2014. She currently leads the ‘Global Innovation Partnerships’ initiative as Senior Presidential Advisor at Drexel University.

Academic Focus and Leadership
Dr. Onaral’s academic focus, both in research and teaching, is centered on information engineering, with special emphasis on complex systems, biomedical signal processing in ultrasound and optics, and functional optical brain imaging. She has led major research and development projects sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Office of Naval Research (ONR), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Federal Aviation Agency (FAA), and the US Marines. She supervised a large number of graduate students to degree completion and has an extensive publication record in biomedical signals and systems.

Dr. Onaral founded several laboratories throughout her career: the most recent is the CONQUER (Cognitive Neuroengineering and Quantitative Experimental Research) CollabOrative, established in Fall 2008 as an interdisciplinary, multi-institutional, and international resource dedicated to the study of brain activation, development, and deployment of functional optical brain imaging technologies in human-system integration and performance, healthcare, mental health, and learning, with research and development partners in the US and overseas, including China, Israel, Italy, Spain, and Turkey.

National Honors, Awards, and Services
Dr. Onaral is the recipient of a number of faculty excellence awards, including the 1990 Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award of Drexel University, the EDUCOM Best Educational Software Award and the NSF Faculty Achievement Award. She is a Fellow of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and a Founding Fellow of American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). She served on the inaugural Board of the AIMBE as publications chair and as Chair of the Academic Council.

Dr. Onaral’s professional services include chair and membership on advisory boards and strategic planning bodies of several universities and funding agencies, including service on the National Science Foundation’s Engineering Advisory Board and on the proposal review panels and study sections. Her professional responsibilities have included service on the Editorial Board of journals and the CRC Biomedical Engineering Handbook as Section Editor for Biomedical Signal Analysis.

She served as President of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS), the largest member-based biomedical engineering society in the world. Earlier, she had served as Vice-President of Conferences of IEEE-EMBS. She has been active in conference leadership; notably, she organized and chaired the 1990 Annual International Conference of the EMBS and Co-Chaired the 2004 Annual Conference of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES).

Translational Research and Health Innovations Leadership – University
Dr. Onaral’s translational research efforts for rapid commercialization of biomedical technologies developed at Drexel University and its partner institutions have resulted in the creation of the Translational Research in Biomedical Technologies program. This initiative brings together academic technology developers with entrepreneurs, regional economic development agencies, and local legal, business, and investment communities. Under her leadership, the program has been awarded $10 million from the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation towards the creation of the $20 million Coulter-Drexel Translational Research Partnership Endowment that serves all faculty and researchers at Drexel University. She has participated in the development of the Philadelphia Pediatric Device Consortium (PPDC), sponsored in part by the FDA and led by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Drexel University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Global Academic and Innovation Partnerships
Dr. Onaral has actively forged international academic and innovation partnerships with institutions in China, Israel, Italy, Spain, and Turkey.

In 2000, she led the first Eisenhower Foundation sponsored delegation of biomedical engineers to China and helped organize the first Asia-Pacific Biomedical Engineering Conference in Hangzhou. Dr. Onaral has been instrumental in the organization of international biomedical engineering conferences in China, including the Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) in Shanghai, China, in 2005. She led the development of the dual-doctoral degree program in Neuroengineering with Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) that is currently expanding other emerging fields in biomedical engineering.

Dr. Onaral has facilitated the development of translational research partnership with the Institute for Drug Research (IDR) of Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. She is spearheading the creation of similar partnerships in China, including Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the Shanghai Advanced Research Institute and Shanghai Technology University.

In Turkey, she participated in the strategic planning team charged with the creation of Sabancı University, established in 1998 in Istanbul, Turkey, and served on its Board of Trustees. Sabancı University is top ranked in innovation and entrepreneurship in Turkey. Dr. Onaral also served as the President of the Turkish American Scientists and Scholars Association (TASSA) and is the senior advisor for strategic and global partnerships at Teknopark Istanbul, the $4 billion science, technology, and innovation hub under development in Turkey. Her responsibility areas center on health technologies and human-system integration in aerospace. She also serves as an honorary advisor to several Turkish universities, including her membership on the EBILTEM Technology Transfer Advisory of Ege University, Izmir, the Advisory Board of DEPARK, the Dokuz Eylul University Health Technopark, and the HUNITEK, Hacettepe University Advanced Technology initiative. Dr. Onaral has participated as the US lead or global liaison in regional health innovation initiatives, namely INOVIZ, INOVAnkara, and INOVITA in Izmir, Ankara, and Istanbul, Turkey, respectively. In July 2015, she was recognized as one of the ’30 Most Influential Turkish American Women in the USA’ by TurkofAmerica.

GÜLER SABANCI

Güler Sabancı, (born 1955, Adana, Turkey), Turkish business executive who was chairperson of the family-owned Sabancı Holding, one of Turkey’s largest conglomerates, involved in banking, automobiles, food and tobacco, tourism, and chemicals.

Sabancı was the granddaughter of Hacı Ömer Sabancı (1906–66), who started building what would become the Sabancı Group by investing in a small cotton textile concern in Adana; her father, Ihsan Sabancı (1930–79), was the eldest of Hacı Ömer’s six sons. She showed an early interest in the family enterprise, and, after graduating (1978) with a degree in business administration from Boğazi?i University, Istanbul, she took a job with the Sabancı Group’s tire-production company, Lassa (later Brisa). Sabancı worked her way up to general manager of Kordsa, the group’s tire-cord-production company (1985), and to president of the group’s tire and reinforcement-materials unit (1997).

She was named chairman and managing director of Sabancı Holding in 2004 after the death of her uncle Sakıp Sabancı, who had been head of the conglomerate since 1967. After taking control, she continued her uncle’s work in expanding the family’s financial and industrial enterprise into a worldwide business empire. She also served as a trustee of Sabancı University and of the Sakıp Sabancı Museum, which was housed in the family’s former summer home near the Bosporus. In 2013 Sabancı was elected to the supervisory board of the German technology giant Siemens AG.

Sabancı also headed the philanthropic Sabancı Foundation, and she supported numerous causes, including the “Girls Not Brides” initiative to end child marriages around the world. In addition, she campaigned for greater educational opportunities for children and for an end to the use of child labourers.

FERYAL ÖZEL

Feryal Ozel is a Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Department of Astronomy at University of Arizona. She has made pioneering contributions to the physics of neutron stars and black holes, as well as to the co-evolution of black holes and galaxies in the early Universe. Dr. Ozel made the first accurate measurements of the neutron star radii that constrain the ultradense matter equation of state. Based on her work on accretion flows, she made the first size predictions of the images of nearby supermassive black holes at different wavelengths.

Born in Istanbul, Turkey, Dr. Ozel attended the Uskudar American Academy for middle school and high school, graduating in 1992. She received a BS summa cum laude from Columbia University and was the salutatorian of her class. Spending a year in Europe, she received a master’s degree from Niels Bohr Institute in 1997 and worked at CERN. She received her PhD from Harvard University in astrophysics in 2002 on the effects of the intense gravitational and magnetic fields of neutron stars. Before joining the faculty at the University of Arizona, she was a NASA Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.

Dr. Ozel is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of the Science Academy of Turkey. Ozel received the Maria Goeppert Mayer award from the American Physical Society, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Fellowship, the Miller Institute Visiting Professorship from the University of California in Berkeley, and the Bart J. Bok Prize from Harvard University.

Dr. Ozel has served on a large number of advisory committees for NASA and the National Science Foundation, including the NASA Astrophysics 30-year Roadmap and the Chandra X-ray Telescope Users Committee. She frequently appears in TV documentaries on PBS, the History Channel, and CNN International as well as in many scientific articles in the popular press. She has also been a spokesperson for the Louis Vuitton’s Women’s Literacy Campaign in the Middle East.