Ali C. Akyildiz

Short Biography

Dr. Ali C. Akyildiz is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Erasmus Medical Center (Rotterdam, the Netherlands) and in the Department of Biomechanical Engineering at Delft University of Technology (Delft, the Netherlands). He was born in Istanbul (Turkey) and received his BSc (2006) and MSc (2008) degrees from the Mechanical Engineering Department at Bogazici University (Istanbul, Turkey). His MSc research was on computational modeling of red blood cell deformation. Following his MSc, he moved to the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Erasmus Medical Center (Rotterdam, the Netherlands) to perform his PhD studies. In 2013, the institute awarded him with a PhD degree for his experimental and computational work on biomechanical modeling of atherosclerotic plaques for risk assessment.

After his PhD, Dr. Akyildiz accepted a post-doctoral position at CeMSIM (Center for Modeling, Simulation & Imaging in Medicine) of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (New York, USA). His main research focus there was the mechanical characterization of non-pathological soft tissues. In January 2016, Dr. Akyildiz rejoined the Cardiovascular Biomechanics Laboratory of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Erasmus MC as a post-doctoral fellow to continue his research on atherosclerotic plaque biomechanics. In January 2017 he received the prestigious Marie Sklodowska-Currie Individual Fellowship, offered by the European Union for his research proposal on carotid atherosclerosis biomechanics. Dr. Akyildiz holds Assistant Professor positions in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Erasmus Medical Center since July 2019 and in the Department of Biomechanical Engineering at Delft University of Technology since June 2020. He serves as an associate editor for the journal Molecular & Cellular Biomechanics and as a review editor for the journal Frontiers in Medical Technology, and is a board member of YOUNG@Heart (Netherlands Heart Institute).