Basak Balaban

Basak Balaban obtained her Bachelor’s degree in 1993 from the University of Ankara,Turkey, working in the faculty of Biological Sciences. Following her clinical embryology training and education at the Ankara Sevgi Hospital-Turkey in between the years 1994-1996, she was certificated for the laboratory based procedural applications of IVF (In-vitro fertilization) at  The Schoysman Infertility Manegement Foundation (SIMAF), Brussels, Belgium, and certificated in 1996 by the Health Ministry of Turkey, as a laboratory director for an IVF clinic.   She founded and chaired the IVF laboratory in the Assisted Reproduction Unit of German Hospital, Istanbul, Turkey in 1996.  She became the chief embryologist in the American Hospital of Istanbul, Assisted Reproduction Unit at the end of 1996.  She is still the principal embryologist in this laboratory that performs over 1200 IVF/ICSI (ICSI-Intracytoplasmic sperm injection) cycles per year. She’s also the scientific advisor of the affiliated university hospital IVF department;  Koc University  Hospital, Assisted Reproduction Unit.  Her major interest areas are embryo selection and in-vitro culture techniques, cryopreservation, and blastocyst culture. She has published and lectured extensively in these fields.  She’s a member of ESHRE since 1996, was a board member of  CNR (Committee for National Representatives)  from 2008- 2015, and an executive committee member from 2015-2019.  She’s a member of the Alpha society ; an International Society of Scientists in Reproductive Medicine since 2000, and had been the chair of the society from 2008 till 2012 for two terms.  She’s one of the founders and was the chair of the Turkish Society of Clinical Embryologists (KED) from 2011 till 2015.  She’s also a board member of the Turkish Society of Reproductive Medicine since 2017.