On March 5, the Bilkent University Board of Trustees approved the University Senate’s proposal to confer honorary doctorates upon Dr. Özlem Türeci and Prof. Uğur Şahin.
According to the ECO Cultural Institute, quoting Bilkent University in Ankara, Prof. Uğur Şahin and Dr. Özlem Türeci, the co-founders of BioNtech, the German biotechnology company that produced the Coronavirus vaccine, will be awarded honorary doctorates.
Both Prof. Şahin and Dr. Türeci are physicians and academics with a research background in oncology and immunology, as well as entrepreneurs who have founded two companies. Prof. Şahin is BioNTech’s CEO, while Dr. Türeci, as the company’s chief medical officer, is responsible for clinical research and development.
As two of the founders of the Germany-based biotechnology company BioNTech, Dr. Türeci and Prof. Şahin played a central role in the development of a COVID-19 vaccine in less than a year.
It is planned to hold a ceremony at Bilkent in the near future to confer the honorary doctorates.