Furkan completed his undergraduate degree in physics at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkiye. During his time there, he focused on studying the theory of ultracold dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates using the Hartree-Fock Bogoliubov method. Later, in 2018, he enrolled as a Ph.D. student at Harvard Physics, where his research shifted towards constructing an Erbium quantum gas microscope. After earning his M.A. in experimental atomic, molecular, and optical physics, Furkan changed his research direction to investigate the origins of life on Earth. Currently, he is part of the Sasselov group, where he is involved in studying the origins of homochirality and the effects of UV light on the chemistry of the prebiotic world.

In his homochirality research, he investigates the role of magnetic surfaces as chiral agents due to a phenomenon known as the chiral-induced spin selectivity (CISS) effect. In his recent work, by utilizing magnetic surfaces as templates for the asymmetric crystallization of an RNA precursor, Furkan demonstrated a robust way of achieving homochirality in RNA under prebiotic conditions.

Publications

1. Ozturk, S. Furkan, and Sasselov, Dimitar D. “On the origins of life’s homochirality: Inducing enantiomeric excess with spin-polarized electrons” PNAS (2022).
2. Ozturk, S. Furkan, Liu, Ziwei, Sutherland, John D., Sasselov, Dimitar D. “Origin of biological homochirality by crystallization of an RNA precursor on a magnetic surface” Science Advances (2023).
3. Ozturk, S. Furkan, et al. “Chirality-Induced Magnetization of Magnetite by an RNA Precursor” arXiv preprint arXiv:2304.09095 (2023). (Accepted by Nature Communications)
4. Ozturk, S. Furkan, Sasselov, Dimitar D. and Sutherland, John D. “The central dogma of biological homochirality: How does chiral information propagate in a prebiotic network?” JCP (2023).

Research Highlight

• Magnetism May Have Given Life Its Molecular Asymmetry by Quanta Magazine
• Service, Robert. (2023). ‘Breakthrough’ could explain why life molecules are left- or right-handed. Science, 380-6650.
• Greed, S. (2022). The dawn of asymmetry. Nature Reviews Chemistry, 1-1.
• Bloom, B. P., Waldeck, A. R., & Waldeck, D. H. (2022). Homochirality and chiral-induced spin selectivity: A new spin on the origin of life. PNAS, 119(34), e2210505119.

Enantioenriched crystals of ribose-aminooxazoline, an RNA precursor, on a magnetite surface.

Furkan's paper was featured on the cover of The Journal of Chemical Physics !