Prof. Dr. Argun Akif Özak completed a Bachelor of Science in Fisheries and a Master’s in Fish Diseases at the Faculty of Fisheries, University of Çukurova in Turkey. He obtained a Ph.D. in Fish Parasitology from the same university. During his Ph.D., he undertook short-term research fellowships at the Institute of Marine Research (IMR, Havforskningsinstitutet) in Austevoll (Norway), the Fish Disease Research Group (FDRG) at the University of Bergen (Norway), and the Fish Disease Department of The Agricultural University of Szczecin in Poland between 2001 and 2002. He participated in the International Conference on Copepoda (8th and 10th ICOC) held in Taiwan and Thailand with grants he received from the World Association of Copepodologists (WAC). He also attended lectures on Systematics, Morphology, and Techniques for Identification of Copepods and their Larval Stages at the Pre-conference Workshop organized by WAC in Khon Kaen, Thailand.
Following his doctoral thesis, titled “Studies on the biology of Caligus minimus Otto, 1821 (Copepoda: Caligidae) on European Sea bass, Dicentrarchus labrax L.,” Prof. Özak shifted his research interest from “Sea Lice Biology” to the “Taxonomy of Parasitic Copepods on Marine Fishes.” In 2014, he undertook a postdoctoral fellowship at the Natural History Museum in London, UK, to conduct research on “Sea Lice of The Mediterranean – I: Caligus,” supervised by Prof. Geoff Boxshall.
In 2015, Prof. Özak was appointed Associate Professor at the Faculty of Fisheries, University of Çukurova, Turkey. He currently serves as a Professor and lectures to undergraduate and postgraduate students in the Department of Fish Diseases & Aquaculture at the Faculty of Fisheries, University of Çukurova. Prof. Özak has published approximately 30 articles, book chapters, edited volumes, and reports and has delivered numerous presentations at conferences, symposia, and workshops. His current focus is primarily on parasitic copepods, with a particular interest in the family Caligidae Burmeister, 1835, carried by Red Sea immigrant/lessepsian fish species in the Mediterranean Sea.