MANHATTAN, KANSAS, US — Hulya Dogan, PhD, has been named interim head of the Kansas State University Grain Science and Industry Department as well as interim director of the IGP Institute. Dogan’s appointment will begin July 24 and continue throughout the university’s national search for a permanent department head. She succeeds Gordon Smith, who had led the department since February 2015.

As acting department head, Dogan’s “top priorities will be to increase student enrollment and support fundraising efforts for teaching and research infrastructure for the department,” according to KSU.

In addition to the interim appointments, Dogan also is the G.M Ross agricultural endowment professor and the agriculture department’s undergraduate chair and teaching coordinator.

She has been teaching at KSU for the past 16 years and held research positions at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, US, before that. Dogan received her bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees in food engineering at the Middle East Technical University in Turkey.