Feryal Özel is Chair and Professor of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She specializes in black hole and neutron star physics, integrating general relativity, computational modeling, and multi‑wavelength observations. As a founding member and science leader of the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration, she helped deliver the first images of black hole shadows and led global press events sharing these results. Her work with NASA’s NICER mission advances precision constraints on neutron star structure and the dense‑matter equation of state.

Özel serves in national and international science leadership roles, including advisory and mission study positions across NASA and partner institutions, including chairing NASA’s Lynx X-ray Observatory study, the NASA LISA Science Implementation Study, and NASA’s Astrophysics Advisory Committee. Özel is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of the Turkish Science Academy. She has received numerous honors, including the Maria Goeppert Mayer Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Oppenheimer Lectureship. With the EHT, she won the Breakthrough Prize in Physics and NSF’s Diamond Achievement Award. She also received the Rossi Prize twice, with EHT (2020) and NICER (2022). Özel serves on multiple advisory boards. An enthusiastic science communicator, she has contributed to documentaries on PBS, CNN, BBC, and the History Channel.