In the midst of his seventh year at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, Ilber Manavbasi still finds time for his passions, including ballroom dance, cooking, piano, mixology, and, of course, neuroscience.

Originally from Turkey, he came to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to  Ilber Manavbasi. Credit: Lily Dokhanchi, Beckman Institute Communications Office. pursue research opportunities in neuroscience. Manavbasi began at the Beckman Institute in educational psychology professor Elizabeth Stine-Morrow’s lab in 2018, focusing on motivation in learning. He earned his B.S. in biology and psychology in 2021. 

Following his graduation, Manavbasi worked as a lab manager for two years while applying for Ph.D. programs. He began pursuing his Ph.D. at Illinois in Naiman Khan’s lab, focusing on the effects of a soy diet in children’s learning and cognition. He hopes his research may be used to make positive changes in children’s lives, ultimately leading to increased cognitive skills and memory.

How did you start on your path toward becoming a researcher?

My grandmother on my mother's side was a professor of anthropology, so I've always been exposed to academia. I was aware that doing research as a living was a possibility, which isn't typically the case for most people. As a little kid, I was very interested in complex systems, and my family was supportive of my questioning; they always encouraged me to go find out the answers instead of just ignoring my questions.

Then over time, my interest in research turned to be human-focused; I was interested in studying the brain, and then halfway through high school, I decided I wanted to pursue neuroscience. This was still a relatively new field, and there were not yet many institutions that focused on neuroscience in Turkey, so I decided to do my undergraduate degree internationally. I decided on Illinois because of its focus on research and the high level of output.

What made you take an interest in your field?

My second semester of my undergraduate program, I began to look for labs to join. It’s pretty funny actually, because I ended up on a tour of Beckman through my dorm. During that tour, I began talking to Professor Elizabeth Stine-Morrow and instead of talking about her work, we began discussing a study about the importance of parental language ability in children’s achievements.

Liz [Stine-Morrow] asked me to email the study to her, and I also mentioned that I was looking for a lab to join. She asked me if I wanted to work in her lab, which was great because I already knew we were interested in similar topics, and I ended up working in her lab for the remaining three and a half years of my undergraduate career. I also worked as a lab manager in her lab after graduation for 2 years, which is when I began applying to Ph.D. programs in neuroscience. I again was accepted at Illinois, and joined Professor Naiman Khan’s lab, who is my current adviser.

What is the most important question you want to answer through your research?

My current work focuses on how lifestyle factors, such as body composition, diet and physical activity affect cognitive ability and brain health. A lot of this work focuses on brain structure. I eventually hope to investigate how lifestyle factors impact cognitive ability through influencing the brain's capacity for adaptation.

The structure of the brain is constantly changing across the lifespan due to development and aging, learning new things, and adapting to new environments. Our current ability and environment shapes future brain structure and the relationship between structure and function. It’s a complicated and convoluted web of influences and I hope to start unraveling some of it.

How could your research be applied in real-life scenarios and what impact do you hope it has?

We are hoping that we can take our results to policymakers, doctors, teachers and parents and make real, positive change in the world.

For example, right now, Professor Khan, fellow graduate student Ajla Bristina and I are currently working on a soy food intervention project where we provide kids with soy foods, and we also have a control group who is getting non-soy plant protein. We will be looking at the impacts these foods have on body composition and possibly other impacts on cognitive ability. We are expecting an increase in memory ability and improvements in body composition alongside other changes as well, and hope the interested groups will take these results and incorporate them into their lives and their children’s lives.

I also have a long-term goal to identify ways we can intervene with the impact of lifestyle factors, such as body composition and physical activity levels, on cognition. We know that it is remarkably difficult to change the impact of these things, so I hope to help identify ways we can accomplish this.

Describe a transformative moment or experience you have had at Beckman.

The experience that I've been a big fan of was the Beckman Institute Open House. We opened up our lab so that all of the kids and adults could come in and ask questions, and they all were super excited about learning. I am a big fan of science communications, so it was a great experience being able to talk about our work and explain why it matters.

I also had a great experience on Brain Awareness Day when my lab visited a local school to teach three lessons. We dissected sheep brains, and it was wonderful seeing how excited the kids were about this. There was one student who kept coming back throughout the day to ask questions, which was great because I could really tell that he was interested in neuroscience.

Do you have any hobbies, interests or accomplishments you would like to discuss or highlight?

Two things that I’m very passionate about outside of academia are mixology, or cocktail making, and cooking. I am also very passionate about ballroom dancing, which I’ve actually placed pretty well in at collegiate competitions. I injured my knee a year ago and injured my hip six months ago, so I am unable to dance right now.

Aside from this, I play the piano and have played on and off since I was 6 years old. It is hard to find the time for such a big commitment to improve, and I find myself enjoying ballroom dancing much more currently, so I am hoping to get back to doing that soon.