Fellow:Ipeknaz Icten


Name Ipeknaz Icten School (Cohort) Swarthmore College (2021 cohort) Majoring in Biology & Computer Science Country Turkey Email Special:EmailUser/Ipeknazicten

Bio

Ipeknaz Icten is a sophomore at Swarthmore College, planning to double major in computer science and biology. She was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey.

Ipek recently discovered her passion for computer science, when she took her first coding class over the Spring 2021 semester. Although she was intimidated by her lack of knowledge at first, she started to truly enjoy the course and coding as a whole through encouraging interactions with the professors and peer teaching assistants. This year she is working as a teaching assistant for the same course to help new students feel welcome in CS no matter their previous experiences. Ipek is also working as a design intern for the Center for Innovation and Leadership at Swarthmore to learn more about design thinking through the UIF program and apply its principles to better the Swarthmore community.

Ipek is involved in biology research on campus, where she uses computational methods to study the interplay between evolution and development. She hopes to further her knowledge and experience in computational biology and biotechnology to apply it to biomedical research in the future.

In her free time Ipek likes to sing in the Swarthmore College choir, read, travel and sail. She is truly excited to be able to travel again (with masks) after nearly a year of COVID lockdown in Istanbul.