Ekrem Gürel graduated at the top of his class from the Department of Field Crops at the Faculty of Agriculture, Ankara University, in 1987. That same year, he received a TÜBİTAK scholarship for a doctoral study abroad in "biotechnology," completing his PhD in the Department of Theoretical and Applied Biology at the University of Leeds (UK) in 1992 without a prior master’s degree. He then returned to Turkey.
From 1992 to 1995, he worked as a Technical Specialist in the Plant Breeding Department at the Sugar Institute of Turkish Sugar Factories Co. In October 1995, he joined the Department of Biology at the Faculty of Science and Letters, Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal University, as an Assistant Professor. He was promoted to Associate Professor in November 1998 and to Professor in February 2004 in the same department.
During his tenure at Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal University, he was awarded various scholarships and grants, including two TÜBİTAK-funded postdoctoral research scholarships at the University of Queensland, Australia (1997, three months) and the University of California Berkeley, USA (2007-2008, nine months). These enabled him to conduct scientific and professional research in various countries.
As a technical consultant to three leading companies in Turkey, Ekrem Gürel also served as Editor-in-Chief of the Turkish Journal of Biology, an international journal indexed by SCI and PubMed and published by TÜBİTAK, from 2012 to 2018.
A pioneer in plant biotechnology research in Turkey, Gürel has produced 186 scientific publications, including 105 international works (78 SCI articles, 17 articles in international journals, and 10 book chapters in English). His publications have around 3,200 citations on Google Scholar and over 1,200 citations in Web of Science, with an h-index of 30 and i10-index of 68 on Google Scholar, and an h-index of 19 in Web of Science.
His primary scientific research goals are: (i) to register Turkey’s first indigenous hybrid sugar beet variety resistant to Rhizomania disease, (ii) to enhance the production of plant-derived cardiac glycosides, used in heart medications, via biotechnological methods, and (iii) to develop large-scale plant-based production of valuable metabolites through chloroplast transformation.
For many years, Gürel has served as a reviewer and moderator for scientific and educational projects under TÜBİTAK’s KBAG, TOVAG, and BİDEB divisions. Since 2012, he has also acted as an external consultant for high-budget national research projects funded by Kazakhstan's Ministry of Education and Science.
He has been involved as a principal investigator, researcher, or consultant in numerous national and international research projects, including one EU project (national coordinator), 14 TÜBİTAK projects (with roles in 1001, 1002, and 1003 programs), and six institutional projects—a total of 21 research projects.
As the first Institutional Erasmus Coordinator of Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal University, he initiated Erasmus programs and Bologna Process efforts between 2003 and 2005, also serving as founding vice president of the European Association of Erasmus Coordinators during this time.
He served as a part-time faculty member in the Department of Basic Sciences, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, at TED University from September 2015 to May 2018. Between September 2012 and September 2015, he was Chair of the Department of Biology at the Faculty of Science and Letters, Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal University.
Gürel held the position of Member of the Group Executive Committee at TÜBİTAK’s Scientist Support Programs Department (BİDEB) from July 2018 to May 2020 and served as a Member of the Advisory Board at BİDEB from August 2020 to July 2022.
He was Acting Dean of the Faculty of Science and Letters at Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal University from December 2020 to September 2023 and has been serving as Dean since September 2023.
Ekrem Gürel is married, has one son, and is fluent in English and has basic knowledge of French.
