Prof. Dr. Ekrem GÜREL

Rector of Iğdır University

Prof. Dr. Ekrem Gürel graduated in 1987 as the top-ranked student from the Department of Field Crops, Faculty of Agriculture, Ankara University. In the same year, with a scholarship awarded by TÜBİTAK, he started his PhD at the Department of Theoretical and Applied Biology at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom without undertaking a master’s degree.

Between 1992 and 1995, he worked as a Technical Specialist at the Sugar Institute of Turkish Sugar Factories Inc. In 1995, he joined the Department of Biology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Bolu Abant İzzet Baysal University (BAİBÜ) as an Assistant Professor. He was awarded the title of Associate Professor in 1998 and Professor in 2004.

Throughout his academic career, he conducted postdoctoral research in Australia (the University of Queensland) and the United States (the University of California, Berkeley), and carried out numerous scientific studies at both national and international levels. One of Türkiye’s leading researchers in the field of plant biotechnology, Prof. Dr. Gürel has a total of 191 scientific publications, 81 of which are indexed in SCI. According to Google Scholar, he has nearly 3,700 citations and an h-index of 32.

He has served as a project coordinator, researcher, or advisor in a total of 21 scientific projects, including 14 projects supported by TÜBİTAK and one project funded by the European Union. He has also provided external consultancy for research projects supported by the Ministry of Education and Science of Kazakhstan.

Between 2012 and 2018, he served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Turkish Journal of Biology and held memberships on the Group Executive Board and Advisory Board within TÜBİTAK BİDEB. At BAİBÜ, he also undertook various administrative roles, including Erasmus Coordinator, Head of the Department of Biology, and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

As of September 2023, Prof. Dr. Ekrem Gürel was serving as the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Bolu Abant İzzet Baysal University, and in 2025 he was appointed as the Rector of Iğdır University.

Prof. Dr. Gürel is married and has one child. He has an advanced level of English and a basic level of proficiency in French.