Prof Özlem Tastan Bishop received her BSc degree in Physics from Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey. She then moved to the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the same University for her MSc degree, entitled “The molecular basis of alpha-thalassemia in Turkey: Establishment and application of PCR-based methods”.
Prof Tastan Bishop obtained her PhD from Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics and Free University, Berlin, Germany in 2003. The title of her PhD thesis is “How lazy are the tRNAs on the ribosome? New insights for the α-ε model”. While doing her PhD, Prof Tastan Bishop became interested in structural biology, and during her postdoctoral positions (The University of Texas at Austin, USA; the University of Western Cape and the University of Pretoria, South Africa) she gained experience in structural bioinformatics as well as structural biology.
During her education, Prof Tastan Bishop received numerous Fellowships and Awards, including the Turkish Government Education Scholarship (Turkey), the British Council Research Scholarship (UK), the Monbusho Research Student Scholarship (Japan), the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) PhD Fellowship (Germany), the NRF Free-standing Postdoctoral Fellowship (South Africa) and the Claude Leon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship (South Africa).
In October 2009, Prof Tastan Bishop took up a Senior Lecturer position at Rhodes University, South Africa. She Initiated a one-year MSc programme in bioinformatics by coursework and research thesis in 2011, which was the first such programme in Africa. She also Established the Research Unit in Bioinformatics (RUBi) in 2013.
Since joining Rhodes University, Prof Tastan Bishop has graduated 10 PhD students, of whom she was the Main Supervisor to 8, and 30 MSc students. Currently, she is Supervising 16 PhD, 2 MSc and 1 Honours students, as well as Mentoring one junior academic staff member and two postdoctoral fellows. She has over 50 peer-reviewed Articles in internationally accredited Journals including, Science, Briefings in Bioinformatics, Bioinformatics, Human Mutation, Scientific Reports, Biophysical Journal, and Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling.
Prof Tastan Bishop's broad Research interest is structural bioinformatics and bioinformatics education. She is a Member of international education bodies including the ISBC Education Committee and the Global Organisation for Bioinformatics Learning, Education & Training (GOBLET). Prof Tastan Bishop is also an Honorary Member of Golden Key. She was the Co-Founder and the first President of the South African Society for Bioinformatics (SASBi) (September 2012 - October 2014), and Mentor to the SASBi Student Society (October 2014 - September 2016).
