Assoc. Dr. Nilay Yapıcı Was the Winner of the 2022 Sabri Ülker Science Award!

The Sabri Ülker Foundation, which implements projects to raise awareness in the field of healthy eating, this year’s Sabri Ülker Science Award was rewarded with a special event that was organized in Istanbul. At the event which was hosted by the Sabri Ülker Foundation, the 2022 Science Award was rewarded to Assoc. Dr. Nilay Yapıcı, who is an Assistant Professor at Cornell University and Nancy & Peter Meinig Family Investigator. Yapıcı was entitled to receive the reward for her works on taste and eating mechanisms in the human brain. 

The Sabri Ülker Foundation Science Award which is one of the most prestigious awards of the world of science was given to its new winner. The winner of the award which was rewarded for the seventh time this year was Assoc. Dr. Nilay Yapıcı, who is an Assistant Professor at Cornell University and Nancy & Peter Meinig Family Investigator. Yapıcı was entitled to receive the award for her study on, “How the Nervous System Controls the Eating Instinct and Metabolism”.

During the ceremony which took place in Istanbul, Assoc. Dr. Nilay Yapıcı’s award was presented by Dr. Çetin Ali Dönmez, the Vice Minister of Industry and Technology of the Republic of Turkey; Ali Ülker, the Yıldız Holding’s Chairman of the Board of Directors; Prof. Dr. Gökhan Hotamışlıgil, the Harvard Sabri Ülker Center President and Dr. Talat İçöz, the Sabri Ülker Foundation President.

Many important figures from the world of science, academy and business world attended the organization where the projects of young researchers in the fields of nutrition, food and metabolism were rewarded with the purpose of encouraging Turkey’s improvement in its journey of science.

Award winning study; studies the neural nets controlling food intake in the brain

Focusing on the biology of hunger in her studies, Assoc. Dr. Nilay Yapıcı is researching how the neural nets that control food intake in the brain work. In her experiments at her lab, Assoc. Dr. Yapıcı carries out studies to find the neurons that manage food intake decisions in the brain and to understand how the activities of these neurons change during the desire to eat. The target as a result of these studies is to analyze the mechanism that causes the overconsumption of especially some foods.

Dr. Yapıcı’s lab; focuses on how animals integrate their physiological conditions with external stimuli and make behavioral decisions, and how these decisions are regulated by organisms. Also, the way that the perception of taste and the sensation of hunger work on the level of genes, cells and neural nets is studies in the latest research projects to be carried out at the lab.

Assoc. Dr. Nilay Yapıcı: “I hope my studies contribute to the prevention of obesity”

Assoc. Dr. Nilay Yapıcı, member of Cornell University, Department of Neurobiology and Behavioral Sciences, stated, “Our studies focus on providing new and interesting data about how the brain controls food intake in the long run. I hope that our scientific studies contribute to the prevention of eating disorders and especially obesity. I am extremely happy to be rewarded the Sabri Ülker Science Award. I would like to thank everyone”.

“Our focal point is; to contribute to building a healthy society and a healthy future”

Ali Ülker, the Yıldız Holding’s Chairman of the Board of Directors who highlighted how much they care about science as Yıldız Holding, said, “Our focal point, both as the Foundation and the Holding, is; to contribute to building a healthy society and a healthy future”. Ali Ülker continued to say: “We continue to follow the footsteps of the late Sabri Ülker, who is our founder to have broken many innovative grounds with his faith in science even 70 years ago, which inspired us. We consider it our biggest mission to green science in Turkey even further, for it to reach out to wider audiences and to support our young scientists who are unable to carry on with their scientific studies to various impossibilities. Surely we are aware of the fact that the mission that we have taken on is a serious responsibility... And our Turkish scientists who contribute to the world of science every year with new studies and inventions are our biggest strength and motivation in this journey”.

Prof. Dr. Gökhan Hotamışlıgil: “Our young scientists are achieving incredible successes”

Prof. Dr. Gökhan Hotamışlıgil, the Harvard Sabri Ülker Center President and Sabri Ülker Science Award Foreman, who stated that the common dreams of both the Sabri Ülker Foundation and the Harvard Sabri Ülker Center are about encouraging young Turkish scientists who will become the stars of the future worldwide, said, “I would like to thank the Ülker family and the Sabri Ülker Foundation for their contributions to our scientific capacity so that its efficiency improves and gets stronger in the universal framework”. Hotamışlıgil said: “This is a long-termed dream. But I believe, from the bottom of my heart, that we will achieve it step by step. Our young scientists who are winners of the Science Award are already achieving amazing successes. And this year’s Science Award winner, Nilay Yapıcı, is one of these valued and young minds. I would firstly like to give her my cordial congratulations. I am following Nilay Yapıcı’s studies on the taste and eating mechanisms in the human brain with great appreciation and excitement. And as the Harvard Sabri Ülker Center, metabolic diseases and obesity is in our focus as well. I am confident that our young scientists will have many more new successes that will make an impression in the world of science thanks to their collaborations that can be implemented in this regard”.

Winners of previous years were welcomed in the online panel

A panel titled “Sabri Ülker Science Award Winners from Past to Present” was also organized within the scope of the gala. Scientists who have become entitled to receive the Sabri Ülker Science Award since 2016 were welcomed in the panel which was moderated by Prof. Dr. Gökhan Hotamışlıgil. While Dr. Ebru Erbay, Dr. Ömer Yılmaz and Dr. Elçin Ünal connected online; Dr. Elif Nur Fırat Karalar and Dr. Tamer Önder were on the stage.

The panelists who provided information on their scientific studies at the panel shared what winning a Science Award added to their lives and their future goals.