Dr. Burcin Mutlu Pakdil at the Annual Function of IMPMS at the University of Texas at Dallas

Burçin Mutlu-Pakdil, Ph.D., is a Turkish astrophysicist. Her research has led to a discovery of an extremely rare galaxy with a unique double-ringed elliptical structure, which is now commonly referred to as Burcin's Galaxy.[1] But, the Burçin's Galaxy was one step further! Through extensive imaging and analysis, our astrophysicist Mutlu-Pakdil found that, unlike Hoag's Object, this newly found galaxy has two rings with no visible materials attached to them. It is a phenomenon that no one had ever seen before!

Mutlu-Pakdil grew up in Turkey, where she loved physics and the night sky.[2] She attended Beşiktaş Atatürk Anatolian High School and was the first generation of her family to attend college.[3] She completed her undergraduate studies in physics at Bilkent University in 2009.[4] She moved to Texas Tech University for her graduate studies, gaining a master's degree in physics in 2012.[4] In 2017 she earned her Ph.D. in astrophysics with the dissertation Testing Supermassive Black Hole Scaling Relations Using Cosmological Simulations and Optical/Near-IR Imaging Data from University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

She uses the world's largest telescopes to understand the nature of dark matter and galaxy formation by studying the smallest galaxies.