Nihal Önal, junior student in the School of Pharmacy at Johannes Gutenberg University-Germany, completed her 2-month summer internship at our university. Johannes Gutenberg University, our partner university, will be accepting Faculty of Pharmacy students (at Istinye University) in the context of Erasmus+ Internship Mobility Program in the following years. We had an interview with Nihan Önal about her internship and educational differences in pharmacy between Turkey and Germany.
Could you please introduce yourself?
My name is Nihan Önal, I am 23 years old and İ’m studying pharmacy at the Johannes Gutenberg university in Mainz.
Why did you prefer the university of İstinye for your internship?
I wanted to do my internship in Turkey with the Erasmus program to increase my language and to see the turkish system and life. One of our partner universities is the university of İstinye. One of my main reasons was the beautiful city, the university itself seemed to be nice, too. My contact person in Germany gave me the mail adress of Dr. Cenk Andac. He told me about his researches and the projects he could include me which were very interesting. Because of this reasons I prefered the university of İstinye.
What do you expect from your internship for your future?
First we worked on drug design systems. Normally I’m not very talented in technology and computer stuff, but working with Dr. Cenk Andac was very informative and enjoyable. I think that in silico methods will be much more present in the future. Even to learn the basics will help me to understand the programs better, but of course I have much to learn.
Can you tell us about your projects your worked on during your internship?
I designed several derivatives of a molecule which has anticancer activities. With different programs we obeserved the binding affinity on a dopamin receptor. Now we are going to synthesize one of the designed molecules and after that the activity on cancer stem cells will be determined. To determine the effect on cancer stem cells we are going to calculate the IC50 factor.
What are differences between the pharmacy teaching in Germany compared to Turkey?
There are lot of differences especially in the structure. In both countries you have to study fıve years for your diploma but in Germany our last year is a “practice” year, where we work full-time in drug stores, hospitals or other pharmaceutical facilities. The main difference is that we have to take 3 state examinations: after the 4th and 8th semester and after the practice year. After the third state examintation we can also work at hospitals for which you have to study five years more in Turkey. Another difference is that the teaching in Turkey in general is more theoretic, in Germany we have more practice, most of our lectures are in labs.
