By Azernews

By Vugar Khalilov

The Turkic Council foreign ministers have hosted Turkish Nobel Prize-winning scientist Aziz Sancar as a guest of honor, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu tweeted on September 26.

"At the dinner of the Turkic Council Foreign Ministers meeting, our guest of honor was Aziz Sancar, our Nobel Prize-winning scientist, whose biggest dream is to see the unity of the Turkic World. We listened with interest to Aziz Sancar's presentation on 'Knowledge and the National Awakening of the Turkic World'," Cavusoglu said.

Aziz Sancar (75) is a Turkish molecular biologist specializing in DNA repair, cell cycle checkpoints, and the circadian clock.

In 2015, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Tomas Lindahl and Paul L. Modrich for their mechanistic studies of DNA repair. He has made contributions to photolyase and nucleotide excision repair in bacteria that have changed the field.

Sancar is currently the Sarah Graham Kenan Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of North Carolina medicine school and a member of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.

He is the co-founder of the Aziz and Gwen Sancar Foundation, which is a non-profit organization to promote Turkish culture and to support Turkish students in the United States.