Basak was born and grew up in Ankara, Turkey. However, she has had the chance to visit several cities and countries, through personal, academic and entrepreneurship travel. Her main passion is initiating new concepts/ideas, doing this as part of a team, and seeing the results of these initiatives.

Basak began working for imec in May 2018, where she took a position as a business development manager. Before that, she was a scientific project specialist on micro and mechanical systems at METU MEMS Research and Application Center. During her last 3 years in Turkey, she started her entrepreneurship journey from ODTU Teknokent and joined several competitions, took top awards in most of them, and had the chance to follow business training opportunities in Turkey and the United States. She also took the first steps towards starting up a biotech company.

Basak brings these entrepreneurial skills to her current work. Her team is composed of successful and ambitious people in technology. For Basak, the most fun part of her work life is its international environment that extends beyond work all the way into the streets of Leuven.

Basak at a glance

Length of time in the Leuven Region: 1 year
Reason for coming to Leuven: The position at imec
Favorite spot in Leuven: The city center
Favorite phrase in Dutch: Eet smakelijk (Have a nice meal!)

1. There are many music and movie festivals as well as science, technological, social, dining, cultural, artistic, and sports events going on in Leuven.
2. You need to buy your raincoat and a good quality umbrella before you come here.
3. If you don’t have a car, it would be good to find a house near (super)markets.
4. There are many foreign people, and the people who live here are very nice. Basak feels you will have no trouble adjusting nor have any trouble speaking mainly English.

Imec is a world-leading research and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technologies. The combination of our widely acclaimed leadership in microchip technology and profound software and ICT expertise is what makes us unique. By leveraging our world-class infrastructure and local and global ecosystem of partners across a multitude of industries, we create groundbreaking innovation in application domains such as healthcare, smart cities and mobility, logistics and manufacturing, energy and education.

As a trusted partner for companies, start-ups and universities we bring together more than 4,000 brilliant minds from over 97 nationalities. Imec is headquartered in Leuven, Belgium and has distributed R&D groups at a number of Flemish universities, in the Netherlands, Taiwan, USA, and offices in China, India and Japan. In 2018, imec's revenue (P&L) totaled 583 million euro. Further information on imec can be found here.

Want to know more about what you saw in Basak's video or have read about here? Check out these links

• We see Basak on the Muntstraat, a great restaurant street in Leuven. She has sushi at Wabi Sabi Sushi Bar.
• She also mentions the Oude Markt, the city's old market that is now a square filled with atmospheric bars and restaurants. Some consider it the social heart of the city.
• As she mentioned in her bio, Basak is constantly curious and letting her creative side play. You can check out some of her projects and profiles here, here, and here.