Umut Yıldız

Umut Yıldız is a Turkish astrophysicist, born in 1980 to a civil-servant family. He worked for many years at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, on deep-space communication and big-data analysis, and became well known in Turkey for his astronomy outreach to young people. After returning to Turkey he took senior scientific responsibilities in technology companies, and he currently serves as Director of Science Communication and a faculty member at Middle East Technical University in Ankara. ^{1 2}

A note on his birth year: Özyeğin University's press bulletin gives 1980 and describes him as thirty-five years old, two statements that agree with each other; some web-published biographies give 1982 instead. The museum follows the university bulletin and records the year as debated. His Wikidata item (Q54303620) carries no birth date. ^{1 3}

Yıldız graduated from the Department of Astronomy and Space Sciences at Ankara University, completed his master's degree at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, and took his doctorate at Leiden University in molecular astrophysics and astrochemistry, remaining there as a postdoctoral researcher. ^{1 3}

Yıldız moved to the United States and joined the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he worked as a data scientist on the laboratory's Mars project; the Özyeğin bulletin describes him as one of four Turks among some five thousand NASA staff. Ondokuz Mayıs University describes his work there as many years in deep-space communication and big-data analysis. ^{1 2}

Alongside his research, Yıldız became known for science outreach, including his "#nasayamektuplar" (letters to NASA) project, in which Turkish school students wrote letters about space; at Özyeğin University he lectured on "Star Formation, Big Data and Space Research Robots" to about two hundred and fifty students from seven high schools. ¹

After returning to Turkey, Yıldız took on senior scientific responsibilities in technology companies working in the Turkish space ecosystem, and he now serves as Director of Science Communication and a faculty member at Middle East Technical University; at Ondokuz Mayıs University he delivered a talk titled "The Birth and Death of the Universe". ²

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