Dr. Yesim Darici, Ph.D., Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Development and STEMM, Director of Women in STEM initiative, CASE, Professor of Physics.

Dr. Darici has performed many important leadership, teaching, and service roles throughout her thirty-two-year career at FIU. Dr. Darici is an educator, scientist, activist and a trailblazer whose achievements have been recognized and awarded globally, nationally, and locally here at FIU. Her awards and recognitions include the “In the Company of Women” Outstanding Women in Science and Technology Award, FIU President’s Access and Equity Award, Florida International University Foundation “Excellence in Teaching” Award, and Florida State University System “Teaching Incentive Program” Award, with many exposures in national and global media and associations.

Dr. Darici’s research focuses on understanding the structure of surfaces at the atomic level and their interactions with the outside world. Over the past three decades, Dr. Darici, a patent holder, has developed and perfected tools that contribute to state-of-the-art research in surface science, nanotechnology and biochemistry. As Director of CWGS, she founded three initiatives, the Gender-based Violence Prevention Initiative, Women in STEM, and FIU’s 100 Women.

In her role as Co-PI of two NSF ADVANCE grants, Dr. Darici is involved in institutional research and collaborations with social science colleagues aimed at identifying trends in hiring, promotion, and retention of women faculty, as well as evidence-based interventions that will improve the status of women in STEM fields.

Dr. Darici received her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1985. She also held positions as a scientist at Amoco Research Center in Naperville, IL, and as a post-doctoral research associate at West Virginia University before joining FIU in 1987.