Başak Balaban, MSc obtained her Bachelor’s degree on 1993 from the University of Ankara,Turkey,working in the faculty of Biological Sciences. Following her clinical embryology training at the Ankara Sevgi Hospital-Turkey in between the years 1994-1996, she was certificated for the laboratory based procedural applications of IVF (In-vitro fertilization) at The Schoysman Infertility Manegement Foundation (SIMAF), Brussels, Belgium. She had also been certificated in 1996 by the Health Ministry of Turkey, for being the responsible embryologist of an IVF laboratory. She founded the IVF (In-vitro fertilization) laboratory in the German Hospital, Istanbul, Assisted Reproduction Unit in 1996 as the head of the IVF laboratory. She became the chief embryologist in the American Hospital of Istanbul, Assisted Reproduction Unit at the end of 1996. She is still the principal embryologist in this laboratory that performs over 1000 IVF/ICSI (ICSI-Intracytoplasmic sperm injection) cycles per year. Her major interest areas are embryo selection and in-vitro culture techniques, cryopreservation, and blastocyst culture. She has published and lectured extensively in these fields. She’s a board member of ESHRE CNR (Committee for National Representatives) since 2008. She had been the chair of Alpha society ; An international Society of Scientists in Reproductive Medicine from 2008 till 2012 for two terms and still a board member of the society. She had acted as the congress president of the society’s 2008 biennal meeting in Istanbul with more than 500 participants, and the main organizer of the biennals in Budapest and London with over 400 participants consecutively. She’s the congress president of the upcoming Alpha biennal in 2014 in Antalya, Turkey. She’s the chair of the Turkish Society of Clinical Embryologists (KED) since 2011.