Dr. Meral Yüce is an Associate Professor and Principal Investigator at Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey, and an affiliated visiting scientist at the Department of Bioengineering, Faculty of Engineering, Imperial College London, UK, specializing in nanobiotechnology. She earned her B.Sc. in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology from Ankara University, graduating summa cum laude, followed by a Ph.D. focused on biosensors. Dr. Yüce has held prestigious research positions, including a visiting scientist role at the Institute of Biotechnology and Chemical Engineering at Cambridge University, UK, and MonoJO Antibody Production Company in Jordan. She conducted research as a British Council Fellow at Leeds University and as an EMBO-ST Fellow at Imperial College London. Her current research interests include biosensors, functional nano bio-conjugates, and molecular affinity probes. With over 50 publications and a patent in biosensing technologies, Dr. Yüce has successfully mentored more than 30 scholars in her lab, including undergraduates, MSc and PhD students, and postdoctoral researchers.
Dr. Hasan Kurt is a UKRI MSCA Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Bioengineering, Faculty of Engineering, Imperial College London. He earned his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Sabanci University in 2016. From 2014 to 2022, he served as the managing partner of Nanosolar Plasmonics Ltd., a tech start-up specializing in commercial nanoplasmonic biosensor platforms. In 2022, he joined the Guder Research Group, where he focuses on developing soft sensors and bio/chemosensors for soft robots. Recently, Dr. Kurt was awarded the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship for 2023–2025. His research interests include light/matter interactions, with a focus on exploiting surface plasmons for applications such as light management in optoelectronic devices, plasmonic biosensing, and organic photovoltaics.
