Dr. Fatma Ne¿e KÖK is currently Associated Professor in the Molecular Biology and Genetics Department of Istanbul Technical University, Turkey. She graduated from the Chemical Engineering Department at the Middle East Technical University and received her M.Sc. and Ph.D degrees from Biotechnology Program at the same University in 1997 and 2001, respectively. After receiving a postdoctoral research fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, she spent 2.5 years in Germany, in a joint project of Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Polymer Research (Mainz) and MPI for Biochemistry (Martinstred) (2002-2005) working on artificial lipid membranes. Her research interests include biomaterials and tissue engineering scaffold design, biosensors, controlled release systems, and construction and characterization of artificial lipid bilayers. Dr. Ahu Arslan Yildiz is currently Assistant Professor in the Bioengineering Department at the Izmir Institute of Technology (IZTECH). Previously, she was an Assistant Professor at Okan University's Genetics and Bioengineering Department and a visiting fellow at the Canary Center for Cancer Early Detection, Department of Radiology, Stanford University School of Medicine. She received her BSc degree in Chemistry in 2003 from Hacettepe University and the MSc degree in 2006 in Chemistry from Middle East Technical University. She received her Ph.D. in Biology in 2010 from the Max-Planck Institute Polymer Research and Johannes Gutenberg University. She specializes in the field of artificial cell membrane and membrane receptor research. Her research interests include applications of biotechnology, including biomimetic systems, biomaterials, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, 3D cell culture, diagnostic tools, drug screening and lab-on-a-chip microfluidic devices. Dr. Fatih Inci is currently working as a Research Scientist (Faculty/Academic Staff) at Stanford University School of Medicine, Canary Center at Stanford for Cancer Early Detection. Dr. Inci received his PhD degree from Istanbul Technical University (Turkey), focusing on artificial lipid membranes and their clinical and pharmaceutical applications on surface-sensitive platforms. During his Ph.D. studies, he was also appointed as a visiting scientist at the University of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia) and University of Technology Sydney (Australia). He also worked as a research scholar at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH)-Harvard Medical School, and Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Division (Boston, MA, United States). Dr. Inci was then appointed a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at BWH-Harvard Medical School and Stanford University School of Medicine (Palo Alto, CA, United States) in 2013 and 2014, respectively. Dr. Inci's area of excellence in research is to create micro- and nano-scale platform technologies in the fields of biomedical engineering, biotechnology and medicine by manipulating biomolecules, cells, and viruses in micro and nano-scale entities. His platform offers precise solutions for real-world challenges in clinical diagnostics, personalized medicine, cancer early detection, forensic science, and biomarker discovery. His research interests also focus on many applications of microfluidics, biosensors, nanoplasmonics, lab-on-a-chip, artificial lipid membranes, disease on-chip models, and drug delivery systems.
