Dr Güneş Taylor is a Chancellor's Fellow and Principal Investigator in the Centre of Reproductive Health at the University of Edinburgh. As a molecular biologist she uses many cutting-edge technologies to understand how reproductive systems are built. Her research program seeks to unravel details of ovarian function, with the ultimate hope of developing solutions for women’s health and fertility. She also is a trustee of The Genetics Society, previously being the Magazine Editor and recently being appointed the VP of Membership.

 

Güneş is also a freelance science communicator and experienced public speaker. Regularly appearing at public venues discussing future technologies and sex differences with household names such as Richard Dawkins, Yuval Harari, Slavoj Zizek, Robert Plomin, Simon Baron-Cohen and Lord Robert Winston. Over the last fifteen years, she has been interviewed for numerous articles and podcasts such as New Scientist, Beyond Today and The Guardian Science Weekly, and even consulted on BBC documentary Dolly: The Sheep that Changed the World (2022). She has written numerous pieces to encourage other scientists to hone their communication skills and engage with the public. Supports the NC3Rs in their training of PhD students to be more confident in communicating about their research. She is a regular host for HowTheLightGetsIn festival and Intelligence Squared podcasts.

​

Since her DPhil at the University of Oxford, Güneş has dedicated time to sharing her own research with others, from five-year-old girls at under-privileged inner-city schools to C-level executives of large multinational technology corporations. Güneş speaks and writes about fertility research, academia, future technologies and philosophy across multiple social media platforms. Her open style of communication and personal life experiences as a refugee and member of the LBGTQ+ community who has moved many times across different European countries make her relatable to diverse audiences. Reflecting this passion for making biology accessible to everyone, Güneş was awarded the Inaugural Francis Crick Award for Science Communication in 2018. In 2019, Güneş was also a finalist for the NESTA Tipping Point Prize with an essay on the potential environmental benefits of genome editing.