Feryal Özel

Feryal Özel (born May 27, 1975) is a Turkish American astrophysicist specializing in the physics of compact objects and high energy astrophysical phenomena. As of 2022, Özel is the department chair and a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology School of Physics in Atlanta. She was previously a professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson, in the Astronomy Department and Steward Observatory. Özel graduated summa cum laude from Columbia University's Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science and received her PhD at Harvard University with Ramesh Narayan acting as Thesis advisor. She was a Hubble Fellow and member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. She was a Fellow at the Harvard-Radcliffe Institute and a visiting professor at the Miller Institute at UC Berkeley. Özel is widely recognized for her contributions to the field of neutron stars, black holes, and magnetars. She is the Modeling lead and member of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) that released the first image of a black hole.