Transitions in development – an interview with Aydan Bulut-Karslioglu

Aydan Bulut-Karslioglu is a Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, Germany, where her research focuses on the epigenetic and metabolic mechanisms regulating embryonic development. After completing her undergraduate degree in chemical engineering, Aydan shifted focus to molecular biology for her Master's degree and epigenetics during her PhD in Thomas Jenuwein's lab. After a stint in the USA for her postdoc at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), Aydan was awarded the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award to move back to Europe in 2018 to start her own lab. Since then, Aydan has been awarded Development's Outstanding Paper Prize for 2022 and, most recently, a European Research Council Starting Grant Award for 2023. We caught up with Aydan over Zoom to hear more about her path from chemical engineering to molecular genetics, her research and what it means to be awarded these prizes.