Cagri Mert Bakirci

Keynote Speaker

Speaker Profile

Çağrı Mert Bakırcı, PhD was born in 1990 in Ankara. He studied at TED Ankara College until high school, then transferred to Çankaya Milli Piyango Anatolian High School, as it was then called. He was one of the top 10 accepted students of the Mechanical Engineering Department at the Middle East Technical University in 2008. During his college years, he led different student societies and took the then defunct METU Mechanical Society and turned it into METU Mechanical Engineering and Innovation Society (METU Mech). METU Mech continues to work as one of the most active student clubs today.

He started an unofficial Biology minor in the Department of Biology at METU between 2009-2010, and in the meantime, he founded a student group called Tree of Evolution under the METU Biology and Genetics Society on November 5, 2010. Today, Tree of Evolution continues to work as a science initiative and it is the most visited, most comprehensive, and one of the most reliable popular science websites of Turkey.

Bakırcı, who graduated from the Middle East Technical University in 2013, had taken courses from the Biology department that would almost satisfy a double major and worked as an assistant researcher in many laboratories at the department. He was accepted to Texas Tech University Mechanical Engineering Department for his doctorate. Here, he completed his doctorate on evolutionary robotics in Burak Aksak’s BIOMS laboratory. His doctoral work was about using the theoretical background of evolutionary biology in the field of robotics and developing a guideline for engineers on evolutionary algorithms. Bakırcı, who also completed his doctorate in Biology Department of Texas Tech University, successfully defended his thesis and graduated in 2018.

Instead of staying in the academy, in 2018, him, his partner and their small team decided to pursue a career with Tree of Evolution project to make it the most comprehensive science communication platform, which had been ongoing for the past 8 years at that point. Tree of Evolution is currently one of the most visited websites in Turkey, namely, 1 out of every 5 people in Turkey visit the website each year. Within the Tree of Evolution project, numerous books, thousands of popular science articles, hundreds of science videos, hundreds of podcasts, and various novel science projects has been produced and continues to be produced.

Bakırcı currently lives in Texas where he continues his duties as the CEO and editor-in-chief of Tree of Evolution, as well as leading digital projects such as Kreosus. He is also contributing to national newspapers like BirGün and Oksijen, writes new books and popular science articles, and he creates new science projects.