(members only and invited guests)

Speaker:  Neva Banes "Turkey Soup for the Soul"

Neva Ciftcioglu Banes, PhD
Born in Turkey, Neva Ciftcioglu Banes, holds an undergraduate degree from Mimar Kemal School in Ankara, Turkey and both a master’s and a doctoral degree in medical microbiology from the University of Ankara, Faculty of Medicine. She served as a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Kuopio and received her “docent/professor” title on Biotechnical Microbiology in the same faculty in 2000.

Neva is co-discoverer and a principal researcher of Calcifying Nano Particles (CNP), formerly known as Nanobacteria. CNP behaves as a microbe and appears to show a correlation with such diverse conditions as arterial heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, kidney stone formation, polycystic kidney disease and malignant tumors. Because of this discovery, Neva and her Colleague, Dr. Olavi Kajander, were nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1998.
She was introduced to Dr. David S. McKay at NASA Johnson Space Center by Carl Sagan in 1996. Eventually she moved to USA from Finland in 2001, and started working at NASA JSC as a research scientist and director of science, collaborating with Dr. McKay on the definition and building blocks for the most basic forms of life. She moved back to Turkey in 2008, and started writing science columns in the number one Turkish Daily Journal, Haberturk, which she continues to this day.

Her scientific work has been recognized through a number of scientific awards from Finnish Scientific Societies and Academies, Turkish Research Institutions, and from NASA Johnson Space Center. She has authored or coauthored over 100 scientific publications, 10 book chapters, and holds a patent on her discovery regarding CNPs. Her work in Haberturk has won numerous awards, including three consecutive annual awards from the Turkish Ministry of the Environment.