Dr Kiymet Bozaoglu is a Team Leader/Senior research officer with over 10 years of experience in complex disease genetics. She leads the autism stem cell program within the Neurogenetics Group of Associate Professor Paul Lockhart at MCRI.
Dr Bozaoglu currently leads the molecular aspects of the Genetics of Autism project at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute which is funded by the NHMRC.She has developed an extensive stem cell modelling program where she can differentiate patient derived-stem cells into brain cells and determine how the mutations identified in our patients may be contributing to autism and also developed the downstream functional assays that are important in addressing this important question.Dr Bozaoglu completed her PhD at the Metabolic Research Unit, Deakin University in April 2009. Dr Bozaoglu is a functional geneticist and her research focuses on the genetics of complex diseases, and its subsequent translation into functional models for validation. Over the course of her career, Dr Bozaoglu has developed expertise in novel gene identification in large family cohorts and subsequent validation using functional models.Her research is multidisciplinary, and has extended to a number of complex diseases, including Type 2 diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, schizophrenia and autism. She made a significant impact in obesity research with her discovery of a novel adipokine chemerin during her PhD. Being the first to describe chemerin as a novel adipokine associated with metabolic syndrome characteristics, her manuscripts around chemerin are highly cited (>1300 citations to date), demonstrating the significance of her research.During Dr Bozaoglu’s post-doctoral work on cardiovascular disease, she discovered a novel gene TRAK2, in a large family study and validated its role in CVD using functional models was published in the prestigious European Heart Journal highlighting the significance of the findings. Relative to opportunity (8.5 years FTE, including 2 periods of maternity leave), she has a strong track record of 26 publications, 6 as first author and 2 as last author and 3 book chapters. Apart from her passion and dedication for science, Dr Bozaoglu enjoys supervising and mentoring staff and students. Since 2010, she has co-supervised 2 PhD, 2 masters and 3 honours students. Her current team consists of 3 RAs and 2 PhD students and she is on 5 MCRI PhD advisory panels. She is also an official mentor for 3 postdocs and informally mentors 4 PhD students and 2 Research Assistants on research and career development.Dr Bozaoglu is also passionate about championing change in the Australian scientific community to increase diversity and inclusivity. She is heavily engaged in various institutional committees including co-chair of the MCRI postdoc society, chair of the MCRI Gender Equity Committee and is part of the advisory committee for the Women in Science Parkville Precinct. With these committee responsibilities, Dr Bozaoglu aims to bring equality in science. This is not just about achieving gender equality, but to empower all scientists to be the best that they can be in the absence of prejudices against their gender, race or religion.Science is about striving for excellence and making valuable contributions to our health systems and patient care.
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Kiymet Bozaoglu's highlights
FEATURED Journal article
Distribution of Parkinson's disease associated RAB39B in mouse brain tissue
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Scholarly Works
Displaying the 40 most recent scholarly works by Kiymet Bozaoglu.
Honours, Awards and Fellowships
E.H Flack Fellowship
Credentials
Positions
Honorary
Paediatrics Royal Children'S Hospital
Member Of The Society
International Society for Autism Research
Member Of The Society
Australian Society for Autism Research
Member Of The Society
Genetics Society of Australasia
Member Of The Society
International Society for Stem Cell Research
Member Of The Society
Australian Genome Technologies Australia
Education
Doctor of Philosophy
Deakin University
Bachelor of Science
La Trobe University