I have been exposed to an ample diversity of disciplines with an experimental focus on stem cells for therapeutic purposes and disease modeling such as the treatment of heart failure in Prof. Philippe Menasché’s team in Paris, modeling pain in vitro using nociceptor neurons reprogrammed from fibroblast in Prof. Clifford Woolf’s lab at Harvard Medical School - Boston Children’s Hospital and the creation of an artificial 3D bone marrow-like niche for blood cell maturation in Dr. Cédric Ghevaert’s team at the University of Cambridge. More recently, I have designed and led the development of a novel all-optical assay to investigate synaptic activity in networks of neurons using optogenetics and stem cell technology in an interdisciplinary, creative and innovative environment at the University of St Andrews in the UK. 

My current work in the Sahin lab at Boston Children's Hospital - Harvard Medical School focuses on an ultra-rare neurometabolic disorder called SSADH deficiency and the use of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC)-derived neurons, CRISPR gene editing technology, multi-electrode arrays and optogenetics to investigate SSADH-related phenotypes with the goal of developing a high content screen for well-annotated bioactive small molecular collections and FDA approved molecules.