Yesim Darici

Yesim Darici has held many leadership, teaching and service roles throughout her thirty-two-year career at FIU. Darici is an educator, scientist, activist and trailblazer whose achievements have been recognized and awarded globally, nationally and locally.

Her awards and recognitions include the In the Company of Women Outstanding Women in Science and Technology Award, the FIU President’s Access and Equity award, the FIU Foundation Excellence in Teaching award and the Florida State University System Teaching Incentive Program award, with many exposures in national and global media and associations.

Her research focuses on understanding the structure of surfaces at the atomic level and their interactions with the outside world. Over the past three decades, Darici, a patent holder, has developed and perfected tools that contribute to state-of-the-art research in surface science, nanotechnology, and biochemistry.

As Director of CWGS, she founded three initiatives, the Gender-based Violence Prevention Initiative, Women in STEM and FIU’s 100 Women. In her role as Co-PI of two NSF ADVANCE grants, she is involved in institutional research and collaborations with social science colleagues aimed at identifying trends in hiring, promotion and retention of women faculty, as well as evidence-based interventions that will improve the status of women in STEM fields.

Darici received her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1985. She also held several positions as a scientist at Amoco Research Center in Naperville, IL, and as a post-doctoral research associate at West Virginia University before joining FIU in 1987.