2019 – 2020
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Visiting PhD student
Harvard- MIT Health Sciences Technology
2016 – 2020
The University of Sheffield
PhD
Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering
2013 – 2016
Izmir Katip Celebi University
MSc
Graduate School of Natural and Applied Science,
Department of Biomedical Technologies
2009 – 2013
Ege University
BSc
Engineering Faculty, Department of Bioengineering
In 2013, I completed my BSc degree in Bioengineering at Ege University, Izmir, Turkey. Following my BSc, I was successful in applying a Turkish Research Council (TUBITAK) supported MSc project on developing and prototyping of a novel uterus manipulator to be used in laparoscopic hysterectomy operations. After obtaining my MSc degree in Turkey, I joined Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering Group at the University of Sheffield to do my PhD in Prof Sheila MacNeil’s and Dr Frederik Claeyssens' groups in 2016.
I completed my PhD degree at Materials Science and Engineering, The University of Sheffield in 2020. My PhD research is focused on developing synthetic and natural tissue-engineered constructs to study the aspect of angiogenesis and exploring novel pro-angiogenic agents as alternatives to expensive and well-established drugs. My research interests include biomaterial development and characterisation, human cell-tissue culture, in vitro and in vivo angiogenesis models, reconstruction of 3D skin models, in-ovo and ex-ovo chick chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) assays.
Throughout my PhD, I have shared my work in biomaterials and tissue engineering conferences around the world delivering research presentations in the United Kingdom, Greece, Turkey, United States of America (USA) and Japan. I have also developed collaborations with Southampton University in my first and second years, and in the third year of my PhD, I was invited by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to conduct a collaborative research study. In 2019, I joined Mercedes Balcells-Camps's Lab located at Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, MIT, Boston, USA for 6 months to develop a novel in vitro 3D dynamic model that enables the study of angiogenesis under physiologically more relevant conditions.
Currently, I am working as an Associate Professor of Bioengineering at Izmir Institute of Technology (IZTECH) and leading Dikici Lab.
Dikici Research Group's research focuses on biomaterials and tissue engineering, pro-angiogenic biomaterials, biomaterials for wound management and skin tissue engineering, in vitro tissue and disease models.
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