We would like to introduce to you our new faculty member who joined the Department of Physics this year: Assist. Prof. Dr. Ali Övgün.
Dr. Övgün was born in 1988 in North Cyprus. He graduated from Girne 19 Mayıs Türk Maarif Koleji in 2005. He attended İzmir Institute of Technology (IZTECH), Turkey as an undergraduate, earning a B.Sc. in Physics in 2010. He spent a year at the University of Southampton, England, to gain experience in astroparticle physics via SEPnet Ph.D. Scholarships in 2011. He then returned to EMU to complete his M.Sc. in 2013 and Ph.D.in Physics in 2016.
Dr. Övgün was thereafter awarded a FONDECYT Postdoctorado 2017 Grant to continue his research for 3 years at the Instituto de Física, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (PUCV), Valparaíso, Chile as a Postdoctoral Researcher.
Dr. Övgün’s academic posts have also included short-term visitor at TH Division, Physics Department, CERN Switzerland in October 2017; Research Visitor at Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Waterloo; Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Canada during January-February 2018; visitor at California State University, Fresno in April 2018 and visitor at Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics in April-May 2018.
Dr. Övgün is a theoretical physicist and works on general relativity, cosmology and astroparticle physics. He is interested in a number of questions that provide us with information about the foundations of physics, including: ‘Is it possible that the Big Bang could be replaced with a wormhole at the beginning of time?’ or ‘How can quantum effects be included in black hole/wormhole thermodynamics?’
We welcome Dr. Övgün to our faculty!
