Case Summary:

The USCIS has set the qualifying criteria for an O-1 (Individuals with Extraordinary Ability or Achievement) as follows:

• You must demonstrate extraordinary ability by sustained national or international acclaim.
• You must have a record of extraordinary achievement in the motion picture and television industry, and
• You must be coming temporarily to the United States to continue work in the area of extraordinary ability.

So, when we got a request to file an O1-A petition for a Turkish client, we first made sure that he understood what the O1-A application entailed. We made certain that the client was qualified to fulfill the criteria and then signed the retainer with him. As soon as the formalities were over, our team began collecting documents with academic and professional information to be used in his petition letter.

This led us to find the following in his documents:

• He has made substantial contributions to the field of organic chemistry. Specifically, his research has focused on synthesizing and developing smart delivery platforms for biomedical applications.
• His research addresses some of our nation’s most pressing issues in understanding how to design more effective targeted drug delivery systems. His strong background in biomedical engineering, materials science and engineering, and synthetic polymer chemistry has allowed his research to be particularly original, with applications such as improving cancer therapies and reducing environmental contamination.
• He also has an extensively documented record of authorship in his field of endeavor. As evidence of this research success, we showed that his work has resulted in 35 peer-reviewed scientific articles, 1 abstract, 1 book chapter, 1 international patent application, and 3 patents.
• Moreover, his work has been cited 2,640 times in other peer-reviewed journal articles according to Google Scholar. These citations come from independent and leading researchers from prestigious institutions and organizations around the world, indicating the major significance of his work. His work has thus been among the most cited in the field in the past several years, and he has been consistently cited more than one would expect from an average researcher in the field.
• He is also active in the scientific community as a peer reviewer for highly acclaimed journals and has conducted at least 22 reviews.
• Furthermore, his study has received funding from the European Union Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions and the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey.
• He also received 4 letters of recommendation from other experts who were willing to corroborate his work in the field. Two of these letters had the following passages about him:

“…it is difficult to deny that [the client] is at the cutting edge of current nanostructures studies, and his present research shows that he is an irreplaceable and vital member of the organic chemistry field. His continued work is necessary for the overall improvement of nanotechnological study in the United States.”

“Throughout his career, [the client] has proven himself as a unique researcher, and his development of structural solutions to issues facing organic chemistry has been widely appreciated. [The client] has supplied the field with methods to face some of the greatest issues in modern scientific discovery.”

It was therefore proven through these facts that his work was indeed extraordinary and of much significance to the United States of America. It was due to our strong case preparation that his approval came through only 8 days after filing. Of course, the credit also goes to the premium processing upgrade opted for by our client. This approval was in addition to an EB1-A (Alien of Extraordinary Ability) approval that came through a few months after his O1-A victory.

We are proud of having represented him in both of these cases and we wish him all the best in his future endeavors.