Name: Timothea Toulopoulou
Affiliation: Departments of Psychology and Neuroscience, Bilkent University
ResilNet role: Principal Investigator

Dr. Toulopoulou is a full professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Bilkent University and an adjunct professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. She served as the Chair of the Psychology Department at Bilkent University from 2015 to 2019. A British-trained academic psychologist, Dr. Toulopoulou combines her expertise in neuropsychology and genetics to explore the causes of schizophrenia through family and twin studies. She has received grants and subcontracts from the Economic and Social Research Council (UK), Research Grants Council (HK), Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK), and the National Institutes of Health (USA). Her current research focuses on understanding the neurobiological and cognitive mechanisms that influence an individual’s susceptibility to mental illness and resilience.

Research interests: Schizophrenia, psychotic like experiences, cognition, neuropsychology, neuroimaging, genetics

Email: ttoulopoulou@bilkent.edu.tr

Name: Mais Tattan
Affiliation: Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Bilkent University
ResilNet role: Postdoctoral Researcher

Dr. Mais Tattan is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Psychology and Neuroscience department at Bilkent University. She completed her PhD as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the University Medical Center in Groningen, the Netherlands, where her research examined diagnostic labelling and stigma in Functional Disorders. She is also a trained medical doctor and holds an MSc in Public Health from Brighton and Sussex Medical School. Currently, her work focuses on investigating resilience in populations exposed to severe trauma, and associations between social defeat, resilience and psychotic like experiences. She has several publications in scientific journals and is a junior fellow at the European Association for Psychosomatic Medicine (EAPM).

Research interests: Resilience, Social Defeat, Stigma, Psychotic Like Experiences, Patient Experience

Email: tattan@bilkent.edu.tr

Name: Gökçen Hazal Güngör
Affiliation: Department of Psychology, Bilkent University; Adaptive Brain Lab
ResilNet role: PhD Student / Researcher

Gökçen Hazal Güngör is a PhD student in Psychology at Bilkent University, working in the Adaptive Brain Lab under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Timothea Toulopoulou. She received her B.A. in Psychology from Middle East Technical University. Her research focuses on psychological resilience, particularly in the context of traumatic life events, and examines how intrinsic brain connectivity patterns may contribute to resilience and protect against psychopathology.

Research interests: Psychological resilience, traumatic life events, resting-state functional connectivity, cognitive heterogeneity in psychosis.

Email: hazal.gungor@bilkent.edu.tr

Name: Zeynep Sema Aydın
Affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, Bilkent University
ResilNet role: PhD Student

Zeynep Sema Aydın is a researcher with an interdisciplinary background in physics, neuroscience, and data analysis. She received her Bachelor of Science in Physics from Bilkent University and her specialised MSc in Digital Neuroscience from the University of Fribourg. Her master’s research focused on the integration and analysis of multimodal neurophysiological data, including EEG, eye-tracking, and behavioral measures, using machine learning approaches. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Neuroscience at Bilkent University. She is interested in integrating computational, biological, and psychological approaches to study cognition and mental health.

She also contributed to a published study in astrophysics, reflecting her early experience scientific research.

Research interests: Data analysis, neurobiology, psychiatric neuroscience

Email: sema.aydin@bilkent.edu.tr

Name: Mert Sarıkaya
Affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, Bilkent University
ResilNet role: Researcher

Mert Sarıkaya is a PhD student at Bilkent University’s Adaptive Brain Lab, with an interdisciplinary background in psychology and science and technology studies (STS). His research focuses on resilience, human-technology interaction, and the neural and psychological mechanisms underlying adaptation to adversity. He is particularly interested in cognitive neuroscience, computational psychiatry, and the use of machine learning methods to study brain, behavior, and mental health, with the goal of better understanding individual differences in resilience and psychological functioning.

She also contributed to a published study in astrophysics, reflecting her early experience scientific research.

Research interests: Resilience, statistical genetics, cognition, neuroimaging, multimodal data analysis

Email: mert.sarikaya@bilkent.edu.tr