I studied Computer Science at the Bosphorus University in Istanbul and Chemical Engineering in Danish Technical University. I performed my graduate research at the Danish Technical University as well and received my Ph.D. in 1999. As a postdoctoral fellow I worked in the laboratory of Prof. Soeren Brunak, Center for Biological Sequence Analysis, in Copenhagen, Denmark. In 2006, I started my own research group at the Department of Biology at Utrecht University. In 2007, I received an High Potential award from Utrecht University.