Born in Of, Trabzon in 1963, Prof. M. Sondan Durukanoğlu Feyiz graduated from the Physics Department of Istanbul University in 1989. She completed her Master’s in Physics at the University of Wisconsin (1992), and her Ph.D. at the Physics department of Kansas State University (1999). From 2000, she continued her academic career as an assistant professor at Istanbul Technical University, becoming an associate professor there in 2006. During her work at Istanbul Technical University, Feyiz has held numerous positions such as Member of the Senate Accreditation Committee (2002-2006); Visiting Scientist at Kansas State University (Summer 2002); Associate Editor in Chief of Istanbul Technical University Bulletin (2002-2007); Visiting Assoc. Prof. of Physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (2007-2009); Senior Researcher at Feza Gürsey Institute (2007-2009). In 2011 she became a professor at Sabancı University where she served as the Vice President, responsible for Education, International Relations, Individual and Academic Support and Summer Schools (2011-2018), as an Executive Board Member of the Nanotechnology Research and Application Center (2014-2016), and as the Chair of the Quality Assurance and Strategy Committee (2015-2018). She has been the president of Kadir Has University since 2018.

Prof. Sondan Durukanoğlu Feyiz, who was the only female in 1991 to receive the Ministry of Education scholarship to study abroad in the field of physics (1991-1995), was also a recipient of the TUBİTAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) Research Fellow Support Funding (BİDEP scholarship) and received the TÜBA (Turkish Academy of Sciences) Coursebook Translation Award (2010). She continues to review papers for prestigious physics journals and acts as a panelist and referee for TUBITAK Research Projects.

Feyiz, whose main research focus lies in Mechanical, Thermodynamic, Electronic and Structural Properties of Metal Nanowires and Nanotubes; Characteristics of Nanoscale Growth on Metal Surfaces; Structural and Vibrational Properties of Metal Surfaces and; Metal Surface – Molecular Interactions, has more than twenty publications.