Associate Professor of Surgery Harvard Medical School

Investigator, Assoc Prof (M) Shriners Hospitals for Children - Boston, Mass General Research Institute

Affiliate Faculty Harvard Stem Cell Institute

artificial skin; biocompatible materials; bioengineering; guided tissue regeneration; hepatocytes; liver; liver decellularization; liver failure; liver regeneration; liver transplantation; perfusion; regenerative medicine; tissue engineering; tissue scaffolds; whole organ scaffolds; wound healing

Dr. Uygun received her BSc and MSc in chemical engineering from Bogazici University and her PhD in Chemical Engineering from Wayne State University. She joined the Center as a postdoctoral fellow in 2006, became an Instructor in 2011 and was promoted to Assistant Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School in 2017.

Her research focuses on the application of engineering tools to help patients suffering from liver disease. Her work combines tissue engineering principles with regenerative medicine to develop technologies in the fields of organ reengineering, biopreservation, burns trauma and wound healing.

She is known for work in whole human liver engineering, where she uses discarded donor livers to make transplantable liver grafts.

For this work, she received the prestigious Pathway to Independence Award from NIH in 2011. She is also the recipient of 2013 Mass General Claflin Distinguished Award and the 2014 Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Transplant Surgeons.

Her work is supported by grants from NIH, NSF and Shriners Hospitals for Children. Her publications appeared in Nature Medicine, Biomaterials, Nature Scientific Reports, Tissue Engineering among others, and have been cited more than 2600 times (h-index 25). She serves on scientific review panels at NIH and DOD, and has given numerous invited national and international talks.