Born in Istanbul in 1965, Barbaros Büyüksağnak completed his primary and secondary education in Beşiktaş and graduated from the Naval Academy in 1987. Following his graduation from the Naval War College in 2000 and becoming a staff officer after serving as branch officer and department head on destroyers and frigates in the Navy, Büyüksağnak served in Ankara, within the Operations Department of Naval Forces Command and at the European Maritime Forces Headquarters in Rome, Italy. Later on, he served as the Executive Officer of TCG Karadeniz, Commanding Officer of TCG Muavenet frigates and Commodore of the II. Destroyer Squadron in Aksaz Naval Base. He represented the Turkish Armed Forces during his 2-year duty as the Oslo Military Attaché in Norway, and he studied especially on the Svalbard Islands as the developments in the Arctic attracted his attention. Having completed his master’s degree at the Institute of Marine Sciences and Management at Istanbul University in 2002, Büyüksağnak became an expert in Marine Policy and retired from the Navy in early 2015 at his own request. He worked as the Deputy Director General at Keyline Co. Ltd. in the logistics industry for one year, and since 2016 he has been giving logistics and maritime courses as a Lecturer and Oceangoing Master at Pîrî Reis University. He continues his PhD dissertation on the Arctic Region in the Maritime Transportation and Management Engineering doctorate program of the same university. He participated in the first Turkish Arctic Scientific Expedition to the Svalbard Islands in 2019. He is also one of the coordinators of the Logistics Education Standards (LES) project launched in 2016 to determine the minimum common points among the universities providing logistics education in Turkey and the related basic vocational courses and their contents in line with the needs of the logistics industry. Büyüksağnak, who served as the Head of the Department of Strategy Development at IMM for two years between March 2021 – March 2023 , has continued his duties as the Head of the Foreign Relations Department since November 2022. A member of the Hamit Naci Mavi Vatan Foundation, Koç University Maritime Forum (KUDENFOR), Bosphorus Marine Culture Environment and Sports Platform, Logistics Association (LODER), Science and Advisory Board of ANKA Institute and Beşiktaş Club Congress, Büyüksağnak is married with one child.