Born in Gaziantep, Prof. Dr. Burcu Özsoy completed her undergraduate and graduate studies at Yıldız Technical University, Department of Geodesy and Photogrammetry Engineering. In 2001, she started her academic studies as a lecturer at Istanbul Technical University, Faculty of Maritime Studies and in 2005, she started her PhD studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). During his doctoral studies, he focused on satellite technology and deepened his studies with statistical mathematics and geophysical sciences. As part of his PhD research on satellite imagery tracking of sea ice in and around the Antarctic continent, he collaborated with many national and international institutions, including NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. In 2006-2007, he participated in the first Antarctic Science Expedition, where he collected ground-based data on sea ice observations, verified satellite images and conducted research on the relationship between sea ice and climate change.

In 2015, he was the coordinator of a 3 million Euro Horizon 2020 project in Turkey, which was carried out jointly with European countries, covering the Arctic and Antarctic regions. In the same year, he founded the Polar Research Research Center (PolReC) at Istanbul Technical University and served as its founding director until December 2019. PolReC, Turkey's first and at that time only polar research center, coordinated the "Turkish Science Base in Antarctica" project carried out under the auspices of the Presidency of the Republic of Turkey, together with national and international collaborations, and served as the strategic umbrella of the national polar science program. Özsoy led the First, Second and Third National Antarctic Science Expeditions in 2017, 2018 and 2019, as well as the first Turkish Arctic Science Expedition in 2019. She also provided expert opinion for the special report on ocean and cryosphere regions published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).