Bioanalysis Young Investigator: Halil Tekin

Abstract

Supervisor’s supporting comments I am very pleased to nominate Halil Tekin for the Bioanalysis Young Investigator award. Halil has proven himself to be an excellent researcher, a very bright laboratory member and a strong leader since joining my laboratory. He has excelled at all of the skills required of a PhD candidate at MIT with his research focusing primarily on future advances in drug development, drug discovery and medicine with high-throughput drug toxicity screening. His efforts have focused on developing novel biomimetic tissue constructs by microengineering methods to further advance the applications of implantable tissues and drug toxicity screening devices. Halil has demonstrated an unprecedented ability not only to learn new material quickly, but more importantly to synthesize new information and ask the important questions needed to move science forward. I am constantly impressed with Halil’s ability, drive and determination in learning, and contributing to the research conducted in my laboratory. Halil’s unique combination of a strong electrical engineering background and his current knowledge and experience in tissue engineering has enabled him to look at fundamental challanges in a novel and insightful way, which resulted in very interesting publications. Halil is an exceptional PhD student conducting outstanding research in tissue engineering which can bring novel applications in human health care. Halil published a paper in a top journal in the field of microtechnology, Lab on a Chip, describing a new way of making cell aggregates and then retrieving them from the microwells in a controllable manner for further experimentation and analysis. He also published a paper in Langmuir, introducing a novel method to fabricate conformally coated thermo-responsive microgrooves to form stripe tissues and harvest them in a temperature-dependent manner. These responsive microstructures can be scalable into high-throughput systems and potentially be useful in tissue-engineering, stem cell research, drug toxicity screening and be integrated in bioanalytical devices. Currently, he is focusing on mimicking biological complexity in microtissues by utilizing dynamic microstructures. I am confident that by utilizing his unique expertise of stimuli-responsive materials, microfabrication techniques and cell biology Halil will continue to make outstanding contributions to this area.