I am a Professor of Psychology at Koç University, Istanbul, and the director of the Language and Cognition Lab. I am also the Academic Director of Internationalization at Koç University.
I study language and thought interactions in different age groups and populations, employing methods and perspectives from the developmental, linguistic, neuropsychological, and cognitive science literatures. I focus on interdisciplinary, multi-method, multimodal, cross-linguistic research and multilevel analyses.
I received the Science Academy, Turkey’s Young Scientist Award BAGEP in 2015, the James S. McDonnell Foundation Human Cognition Scholar Award in 2017, and the Turkish Academy of Science Outstanding Young Scientist Award in 2018. In 2020, I was elected to the Young Academy of Europe. In 2021, I received the Tübitak Incentive Award. I am an elected board member of the Cognitive Science Society and served as the Secretary General on the board of the International Society for Gesture Studies between 2017 and 2022. In 2025, I was elected to the Science Academy of Turkey, and in 2026, to Academia Europea. I am an Associate Editor for the journals Infancy, Journal of Cognition & Development, and Cognitive Science.