Natural Sciences, University of Bremen, Germany, 2023

Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Bordeaux, France, 2015

Computer Engineering, Istanbul Technical University, 2002

Plastic Pollution in the Arctic and its global distribution, microplastic identification, impacts of plastic debris on marine biota  

Dr. Tekman began her professional career as a computer engineer in 2002 and spent 11 years working in multinational companies involved in software development, consultancy, sales, and business development. Her accomplishments in Information Technologies led her to her position at Hewlett-Packard as the Regional Business Development and Product Manager of the Application Lifecycle Management Software responsible for the Middle East, Mediterranean, and Africa regions.

Meanwhile, her passion for the oceans led her to scuba diving in 2006, which opened another world with unknown perspectives that gained strong personal importance. Hence, she decided to leave her successful career path to admit to the Erasmus Mundus M.Sc. in Marine Environment and Resources program, allowing her to live and study in France, Spain, and Belgium. After she obtained her M.Sc. degree, she worked as a scientist, software engineer at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Germany on marine debris pollution, with a focus on the Arctic and anthropogenic debris portal LITTERBASE (https://litterbase.awi.de). The outputs of these projects have been published in high-ranking scientific journals and attracted broad attention in the scientific community and the public. Moreover, she contributed to the MICRO-FATE project by sampling and analyzing the data on plastic pollution in the North Pacific Ocean. This journey led to her co-authorship in pivotal reviews published in Science and Nature Reviews Earth & Environment. Additionally, in collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund Germany, she crafted an extensive report elucidating the impacts of plastic pollution on marine life. This initiative aligned with global efforts to establish a comprehensive treaty addressing plastic pollution within the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-5.2). Further contributing to the marine conservation landscape, she collaborated with Mercator Ocean International as a consultant, spearheading the creation of a strategy and implementation plan for an Integrated Marine Debris Observing System (IMDOS). She earned her Ph.D. in Natural Sciences from the Geosciences Faculty of the University of Bremen.