Fatma Deniz Aydin

Born to a Jordanian-Palestinian father and an Albanian-Macedonian mother, Fatma grew up in Turkey carrying not just her family’s heritage, but also their dreams. Despite facing financial hardship and the weight of being a first-generation scholar, she has turned personal challenges into global change. Three years ago, Fatma launched a nationwide educational programme to support children with cognitive impairments – an underserved group often marginalised by traditional schooling. She created a fully adaptive curriculum, integrating automatic voice support for non-readers, multi-sensory learning tools, and customised evaluation systems. What began as a small research project has now reached over 10,000 children across 47 rehabilitation centres in Turkey.

Recognising that systemic change needs more than one programme, she also founded the Turkey and Levant chapters of BioMedizone – an international movement that is empowering students to access scientific research, mentorship, and academic opportunity. As part of this activity, Fatma has launched several key initiatives. The Research For All initiative is a completely free, year-round research mentorship programme that has already guided 150+ low-income students in building publishable scientific research: students with no previous lab access are now winning international awards and gaining scholarships abroad. Her Global Science PenPal Network is an international mentorship matching system that connects youth from 20+ countries with top researchers. She also launched the Future Scholars Fund – a crowdfunding campaign raising tuition and application fees for underprivileged students, some of whom have subsequently gone on to receive scholarships for pre-college programmes at top American universities.

Fatma’s creative and scientific work has been recognised with honours including NASA Space Apps Global Finalist (2024), Silver Medal in the International Astronomy & Astrophysics Olympiad, Best Scientific Presentation in the BIEA STEM Competition (2024), a Royal Society of Chemistry publication, and a Very High Commendation Award in the John Locke Essay Competition. Fatma has also been accepted to The Knowledge Society – a highly competitive accelerator for future innovators with a 1% acceptance rate globally – and has been invited to pre-college programmes at Harvard, Brown, and Dartmouth.

With her podcast on the Palestine-Israel conflict, Fatma has aimed to create a platform where listeners can rediscover history without bias, borders, or inherited rage; and through her global One Voice, One Future initiative, she has provided free academic mentorship to 600 students in conflict zones. Her international climate network – the One Earth Collective – has planted 5,000+ trees and introduced sustainability policies in multiple schools.

If she wins the Global Student Prize, she plans to expand her special needs learning platform to the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia with translations into Arabic, French, Swahili, and Hindi; establish the "First Lab Fellowship", a micro-grant and mentorship programme that provides small funds ($500–$1000) to high-school students worldwide; and fund a mobile “Science Caravan”, bringing hands-on STEM workshops to refugee camps and rural villages.