I had a chance to visit Turkey, primarily to attend a workshop as a member of the “Turkish Genome Research” project. It was a lot of media hype mostly regarding the very basic concepts of genomics, rather than the specifics of the Turkish Genome variation, which we are currently analyzing. One catchy title, for instance, in a leading newspaper was “We are all Africans”. literally two days later, however, quoting a recent paper that I am a co-author, the headlines were different: “Sitting bull is our kin”.

I have also had a chance to talk at Sabancı and Koç Universities regarding genomic structural variation and evolution.