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As a child growing up in Turkey, astrophysicist Burçin Mutlu-Pakdil used to enjoy looking up at the stars in the night sky. Little did she know that thanks to her scientific skills, a galaxy sitting 359 light-years from Earth would one day bear her name.

Mutlu-Pakdil’s lifelong passion for astrophysics was born when she had to prepare an assignment in middle school on an interesting person.

“I asked my sister for suggestions on who I should choose for my assignment, and she suggested Einstein, because he’s the cleverest man in the world,” Mutlu-Pakdil says. She immediately dove into reading about physics and became obsessed with understanding the cosmos. But she encountered obstacles when she chose to do undergraduate studies in physics. For starters, she had to move from her home town of Istanbul to Ankara.