Ever since her undergraduate studies in environmental engineering and molecular biology and genetics, Irep Gözen has been drawn to interdisciplinary research. She was introduced to biophysics and soft matter science while earning her PhD, and it caught her interest. Her research group has several research directions linked through the concept of soft matter, including most recently the formation and development pathways of protocells at the origin of life.
Irep Gözen grew up in Istanbul, Turkey, and stayed in the city to pursue her undergraduate degree at Istanbul Technical University. She earned her bachelor’s degree with a double major in environmental engineering and molecular biology and genetics. “I had the experience of applying the scientific method for the first time during my bachelor’s thesis work, which was about waste characterization and treatment. I was routinely performing analytical experiments, looked at lots of data, wrote my lab journal, etc.,” she shares. “I moved to biophysics and soft matter science during my PhD studies and have never left it since.”
She earned her PhD in Biophysical Chemistry from Chalmers University of Technology in Göteborg, Sweden. “I was introduced to biomembranes, and the biophysical and materials science aspects of their behavior, during my PhD work,” she says. “I discovered unusual, really beautiful rupture patterns on artificial and cellular lipid membranes. It turned out they were also very interesting, similar in structure and dynamics to cracks in solid materials, all the way up to the size scale of earthquakes.”
Following the completion of her PhD, Gözen started a postdoctoral position at the MIT-Harvard Health Sciences and Technology Division, where she worked on cryopreservation of cells and cellular membranes. “I very much liked the science in Boston,” she explains, “and spent the following two years of my postdoc at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, where my project was about the internal dynamics of artificial cells.”
Gözen is now a group leader at the University of Oslo in Norway. “My group has a few different research directions, but all are linked through the concept of soft matter,” she shares. “Most recently my group has become interested in formation and development pathways of protocells at the origin of life. We look particularly at autonomous shape transformations of primitive cell models on various artificial and natural surfaces —such as minerals and rocks—with early Earth relevance.” As part of this research, they have even studied extraterrestrial solid surfaces, such as a meteorite specimen from Mars.
Moving into the role of group leader has been the most difficult part of her career thus far. “My current position has certainly been the most challenging. I started with the idealistic idea that having original research ideas and knowing how to address them would be the key to success as a principal investigator. I found out quickly that this is only one of the many essential components,” Gözen reveals. “Setting up a laboratory from scratch, hiring team members, training them on experimental methods, continuously fundraising, teaching and other service for the faculty, and lots of other things. It was intense to handle these alone in the beginning; things got easier after I had assembled my team.”
Gözen emphasizes the extent to which technological developments have a strong influence on the development of new areas of biophysical research. “The development of micro-and nanofabrication technologies definitely had an impact on my research,” she explains. “For the immediate future I will continue to employ them and make and manipulate interfaces with atomic precision to learn more about membrane behavior, particularly in the context of the origin of life. Surfaces were abundant on the early Earth, and there is increasing evidence that they may have contributed to the transition from the non-living to the living world.”
The breadth of biophysics has made the field a great fit for her. “It’s truly inter- and transdisciplinary. I realized early that you cannot have the full picture if you don’t look at the problem from the angles of biology, physics, materials science, theory, modeling, and more,” she says. “The many different instrumental techniques, often used to cope with the small scale of the things we work on, add a good share of engineering and technology. This is challenging at times, but it is inspiring, rewarding, and a lot of fun.”
While her research itself is rewarding, so is the response to it. “I feel quite accomplished when I receive emails with comments on my work from people I have never met before. These can be colleagues from the other side of the world, who share my excitement on the findings of a paper which just got published, or people outside the scientific community who want to make our findings known to the public,” she shares. “It is nice to see that the work reaches beyond our circles.”
In a move that satisfied both this desire to engage with the wider community and Gözen’s long-standing interest in visual arts, her group recently organized a contemporary art exhibit at a prominent gallery in downtown Oslo. “We themed it ‘NanoCosmos,’ and showed striking microscopy images of soft materials, mainly molecular film structures and patterns. We were involved in the whole process of setting up the exhibition; it was an amazing experience. We are bound to do this again,” she reports.
Biophysical Society meetings have been a helpful venue to connect with researchers she might not otherwise meet. “The Annual Meetings are for me an absolute highlight. I have hardly missed a meeting for more than 10 years now, ever since I was a PhD student,” she says. “They have had a significant impact in shaping my career. Throughout the years I met a lot of amazing researchers from all over the world who also regularly attend the meeting, some of whom became my collaborators and friends.”
Asked what advice she might offer to those just starting out in biophysics careers, Gözen responds, “I think not being afraid to get out of my comfort zone, being open to learning new methods, and talking to a lot of people about research in a broader context helped me a lot and I highly recommend this approach. Biophysics is not straightforward, but attacking problems from different angles and solving pieces of a puzzle together with other researchers who have different views and backgrounds makes the challenging journey quite worthwhile.”