Prof. Dr. Selmiye Alkan Gürsel received her Bachelor’s, Master’s, and PhD degrees from the Department of Chemistry at Middle East Technical University. As part of her doctoral research, she conducted studies on electrochromic polymers at the University of Florida (USA). From 2003 to 2007, she completed her postdoctoral research on hydrogen and fuel cell technologies in the General Energy Department at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland. Since 2008, Dr. Gürsel has served as a faculty member in the Materials Science and Nano Engineering Program at Sabancı University and a part-time researcher at the Sabancı University Nanotechnology Research and Application Center (SUNUM). Additionally, she served as the Associate Dean for Research at the Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences at Sabancı University from 2020 to 2024.

Prof. Dr. Gürsel leads numerous national and international projects in hydrogen and electrolyzer technologies, fuel cells, polymer membranes, graphene, lithium-ion batteries, and lithium-air batteries. Under the European Commission’s 7th Framework Programme and Horizon 2020, she represented Turkey as a project leader and national contact point in the Graphene Flagship Project, one of the FET Flagship Projects and widely regarded as the “project of the century” in Information and Communication Technologies. She is currently the project leader from Sabancı University for Turkey’s first hydrogen valley initiative, the South Marmara Hydrogen Shore Project.

Prof. Dr. Gürsel’s achievements in these fields have been recognized with several prestigious awards, including the L’Oréal Turkey Young Women in Science Fellowship supported by the Turkish Academy of Sciences (2010), the METU Prof. Dr. Mustafa N. Parlar Foundation Research Incentive Award (2012), the Science Academy Young Scientists Program (BAGEP) Fellowship Award (2013), and the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources’ Women Energizing Turkey – Academia Award (2018). She is currently a member of the Advisory Council of the SHURA Energy Transition Center and serves on the Executive Board of the Asian Polymer Association (APA).