UD alum Mustafa Yücel named the Turkish Academy of Sciences Distinguished Young Scientist

Mustafa Yücel, a University of Delaware alumnus who received his doctorate in oceanography from UD in 2009, recently received the Distinguished Young Scientist Award from the Turkish Academy of Sciences, the first oceanographer to receive the award since its inception in 2001.

Yücel said that it felt great to receive the award and he was thrilled that a researcher in marine science got the recognition.

“In Turkey, marine science has started to gain elevated recognition recently,” said Yücel. “I found the award very timely as it will help me and my colleagues to further promote marine science at national scale.”

Yücel showed his scientific acumen frequently during his tenure at UD. For instance, the average time for a student to receive their doctorate in oceanography at UD’s College of Earth, Ocean and Environment (CEOE), is five years or more. For Yücel, it took just a little over four years.

George Luther, the Maxwell P. and Mildred H. Harrington Professor of Marine Chemistry and the Francis Alison Professor in CEOE who served as Yücel’s adviser during his time at UD, explained that Yücel could have finished sooner, but he wanted to wait to go on a research cruise with Luther’s research group to gather more data for a paper he was completing.