I lead the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland's Institute of Interactive Technologies and work at the same institute as a Professor of Human-Computer Interaction, Visualization and Extended Reality, chairing a research group on these topics. I am also a research affiliate at the Seamless Astronomy group, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics of the Harvard University in Cambridge, USA, collaborating on topics related to scientific data analysis and visualization. I chair the international Exended Reality and Visual Analytics working group within the ISPRS; co-chair the Commission on Visual Analytics within the ICA, and I am a council member with the International Society of Digital Earth.

My interdisciplinary work covers topics related to information science, visual analytics, visualization and cartography, virtual/augmented reality, gaze-contingent displays, eye-tracking, vision (perception and cognition), and human-computer interaction.

Prior to my current position, I worked as a Group Leader and Senior Lecturer at the Geographic Information Visualization and Analysis (GIVA) unit of the Geographic Information Science Center at the Department of Geography, Faculty of Science, University of Zurich, Switzerland (Nov 2007 - Feb 2019). Before I moved to Switzerland, I was at the Geoinformatics & Cartography and the Photogrammetry & Remote Sensing labs of the Helsinki University of Technology (now Aalto University) doing my PhD (see my thesis on foveation for 3D visualization and stereo imaging) and teaching half the time; and later at the Media Lab of the University of Art and Design Helsinki, Finland as a post-doctoral researcher. Prior to that, I was in Istanbul, Turkey; living, studying, working & growing up.

In my professionally formative years, I have received many individual scholarships and personal grants from national and international institutions including IAESTE, CIMO Finland, The Scientific and Technological Council of Turkey, Finnish Cultural Foundation, NRC Canada. I was awarded a various city- and nation-wide writing awards as a high school student, and was recognized as a "successful young scientist" by my alma mater at the end of my MSc thesis. In my later years, I was awarded various career and project grants including e.g., Google Faculty Research Award. My other project grants are listed (and some are detailed) on the projects page.

I (co-)organize conferences and workshops, and serve in program committees of many scientific events, including, for example, the InfoVis, IEEE VisWeek, ETRA, ACM CHI, IEEE VR, Geocomputation, GIScience, AutoCarto, ISPRS, AGILE, and the ICC. I also have guest edited various journal special issues (detailed under publications), and I review for a wide range of journals and grant agencies. I am an active member of several international commissions and working groups with the ICA (International Cartographic Association) and ISPRS (International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing). I am in the editorial boards of several journals including International Journal of Geographic Information Science (IJGIS), and Kartographische Nachrichten (KN), and I review for various grant agencies.

I have delivered many invited talks at internationally reputed universities as well as large scientific outreach events (e.g., TEDxZurich 2011 on interdisciplinary science and TEDGlobal 2013 on women in Turkey). Aside from my professional roles, I am the Zurich chapter lead for Turkish Women's International Network, a network for professional women.