I was born in Istanbul, Turkey. I studied Molecular Biology and Genetics at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara. I received my B.Sc. in 2014 and continued my education at the faculty of Biology in the same university where I obtained my M.Sc. diploma in 2015.

I followed my interest for evolutionary biology and continued my studies at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany, working within the Environmental Genomics group as I PhD student.  I obtained my PhD degree in 2020.

I am currently working as a PostDoc in Hildebrand Group based at the Quadram Institute and the Earlham Institute. My main interests are metagenomics data analysis and vertical transmission of microbial communities.

Key Publications

M. Amine Hassani, Ezgi Özkurt, Eva H. Stukenbrock, Ecological Assembly Processes of the Bacterial and Fungal Microbiotaof Wild and Domesticated Wheat Species, 2020, available in bioRxiv: doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.07.896910

Ezgi Özkurt, M. Amine Hassani, Uğur Sesiz, Tal Dagan, Hakan Özkan, Eva H. Stukenbrock. Higher Stochasticity of Microbiota Composition in Seedlings of Domesticated Wheat Compared to Wild Wheat, 2019, available in bioRxiv: doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/685164

M. Amine Hassani, Ezgi Özkurt, Heike Seybold, Eva H. Stukenbrock. Interactions and Coadaptation in Plant Metaorganisms, 2019, Annual Review of Phytopathology, doi: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-phyto-082718-100008

Omer Açar*, Ezgi Özkurt*, Gulfem Demir, Hilal Saraç, Can Alkan, Tarık Esen,  Mehmet Somel*, Nathan A. Lack*.Determining the Origin of Synchronous Multifocal Bladder Cancer by Next-Generation Sequencing, 2015, BMC Cancer, doi:  10.1186/s12885-015-1859-8 *Equal contributions