Prof. Nihal Apaydin Ankara University, Turkey

Prof. Nihal Apaydin earned her medical degree from Hacettepe University Faculty of Medicine in 2000. She began her specialization in anatomy at Ankara University Faculty of Medicine in June 2002 and obtained her medical specialty degree in February 2005 with a thesis titled “The macroscopic and microscopic anatomy of the... read moregastroesophageal region and its clinical importance.”

In 2007–2008, she received a research grant from the Turkish Scientific and Technical Research Agency (TUBITAK) and spent a year as a visiting scientist at St. George’s University in Grenada, West Indies. Following this, she was appointed Visiting Professor at the same institution in 2009, contributing to both teaching and research.

Prof. Apaydin was promoted to Associate Professor of Anatomy in 2010 and became a full Professor in 2015. That same year, she completed a second PhD in Neuroscience, with a dissertation titled “Evaluation of the relationship between time perception and reward processing in the brain using fMRI in patients with major depressive disorder.”

She has authored over 80 articles published in international, peer-reviewed journals indexed in the Science Citation Index (SCI), contributed to more than 10 book chapters, delivered over 100 national and international conference presentations, and received three national scientific awards.

Since 2009, she has served as Associate Editor for the Peripheral Nervous System section of Surgical and Radiological Anatomy, and as Editor-in-Chief of Anatomy, the official journal of the Turkish Society of Anatomy and Clinical Anatomy. She is also on the editorial boards of Clinical Anatomy, Anatomy Research International, and several other international journals.

Prof. Apaydin was the General Secretary of the 4th International Symposium of Clinical and Applied Anatomy (ISCAA) in 2012 and the Neuroscience Congress in 2016, both held in Ankara. She served as Treasurer on the Executive Committee of the Turkish Society of Anatomy and Clinical Anatomy from 2014 to 2018, Vice President of the Ankara University Brain Research Center from 2015 to 2019, and Head of the Department of Neuroscience from 2019 to 2022.

A Councilor of the European Association of Clinical Anatomy since 2015, she was elected Vice President for the 2023–2025 term and is the President-Elect for 2025–2027, becoming the first woman in the association’s history to hold this role.

Currently, she is actively involved in various committees at Ankara University and serves as Coordinator of the English-language program at the Faculty of Medicine. Her primary areas of interest include clinical anatomy and neuroanatomy, with ongoing research focused on the peripheral nervous system, brain, and neuroimaging (particularly fMRI).