Dr. Caner Süsal graduated from Heidelberg University School of Medicine in 1986. He continued his career in the field of transplantation immunology at the same institution after his graduation until September 2021. He became an Associate Professor of Immunology in 1999 and a full Professor in 2005. He was appointed as an Academic Director in 2012.

Dr. Süsal received many scientific awards and held several leadership positions in the fields of organ transplantation and transplantation immunology. He served on the executive boards of various national and international societies, including Eurotransplant, was the President of the German Society for Immunogenetics, and coordinated the Collaborative Transplant Study in which more than 400 transplant centres from 42 countries have participated.

Dr. Süsal authored or co-authored over 200 peer-reviewed articles and published in high-ranked journals, such as N Engl J Med, J Clin Invest, Blood, J Immunol, Am J Transplant, and Nat Rev Nephrol. His research interests cover all aspects of organ transplantation and transplantation immunology including transplantation of highly immunized patients, transplantation of organs from expanded criteria donors, induction of unresponsiveness to allografts, pre- and post-transplant risk estimation, matching of organ donor/recipient pairs at epitope level, and identification of biomarkers that reflect the balance between the effector and regulatory components of the alloimmune response.

In September 2021, Dr. Süsal was appointed as TIREX ERA Chair Holder at Koç University.

Erdal Mehmet Aksoy, MD, has been the chief physician and medical director at the Koç University Hospital since 2015. Dr. Aksoy graduated from the Beşiktaş Atatürk Anatolian High School in Istanbul (1988-92) before receiving medical training at Istanbul University School of Medicine (1992-98). He received a master’s degree in health management from Istanbul Bilgi University (2011) and is continuing his residency at Istanbul University Institute of Forensic Science.

Dr. Aksoy started his career as an occupational physician at Emlak Bank in 1999 and continued his career at Motorola Türkiye and at the Özel Haznedar Hospital. In 2003, he started to work at the Koç University Health Center as managing director. He was then recruited by the American Hospital as deputy managing director in 2008 and was promoted to the position of managing director in 2010. In 2015, he was appointed chief physician and medical director at Koç University Hospital.

Şükrü Dilege received his MD degree from Istanbul University School of Medicine in 1985. In 2005, Dr. Dilege established the Department of Thoracic Surgery at Istanbul University School of Medicine together with Dr. Göksel Kalaycı. He served as the Chair at the Department of Thoracic Surgery at American Hospital beginning in 2005. He has been a faculty member at Koç University School of Medicine (KUSOM) since 2011, where he is a Professor of Thoracic Surgery. Dr. Dilege served as Associate Dean of KUSOM from September 2017 to January 2018, was then appointed as Acting Dean until September 2018. He has been the Dean of KUSOM since September 2018.

İhsan Solaroğlu earned his MD degree from Osmangazi University and completed a Neurosurgery Residency Program at Ankara Numune Research and Education Hospital. He received a postdoctoral fellowship in Neuroscience at Loma Linda University with Professor John H. Zhang, which was followed by advanced fellowship training in neurovascular surgery. Dr. Solaroğlu’s research interests include the effect of hematopoietic growth factors on neuroprotection. Ongoing work in his lab focuses on investigating the roles of pericytes in blood-brain barrier function and stroke. His lab is also interested in identifying novel pathways underlying the proliferation, migration and survival of glioma cells. He is an adjunct faculty member of the Loma Linda University in California, US.

Prof. Mehmet Kanbay received his MD degree from Istanbul University Cerrahpaşa School of Medicine in 2000. He finished his residency at Başkent University School of Medicine in 2005. After completing his nephrology residency at Yale University in 2009, he became an Associate Professor of Internal Medicine and Nephrology in April 2010. He was elected as a distinguished fellow of the European Renal Association in 2013 and received TÜBİTAK Encouragement Award in 2014. He has more than 150 publications in peer-reviewed journals and is an editorial member of several journals. He has been a faculty member at Koc University School of Medicine since September 2014.

Dr. Koçak graduated from Hacettepe University School of Medicine in 1996. He completed his residency training in Urology at Türkiye Yüksek İhtisas Hospital in 2001. He finished his transplant surgery fellowship at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in 2004. He was a faculty member and the Director of the Kidney Transplant Program at Ondokuzmayıs University School of Medicine between 2005 and 2007. He served as the Director of The Kidney and Pancreas Transplant Programs at Memorial Şişli Hospital for over a decade (20072018). He was promoted to associate professor in 2011 and became a full professor in 2018. He joined Koç University Hospital as the Director of the Kidney and Pancreas Transplant Programs and a faculty member in 2018. Dr. Koçak is certified by The American Society of Transplant Surgeons for Kidney and Pancreas Transplantation.

After graduating from Hacettepe University School of Medicine in 1992, Dr. Özdemir continued with the Neurology Residency Program at Hacettepe University. She also attended to Neuroscience PhD program at the same university. She continued with her postdoctoral studies at Harvard University during 2001—2004. After serving as an Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and Professor at Hacettepe University, she started to work at Koç University in 2014. She continues her research at the Koç University School of Medicine as a faculty member and is the current Director of the Graduate School of Health Sciences at Koç University. In 2021, she was elected as the Deputy Dean of Koç University School of Medicine.

Barış Ata graduated from the Istanbul School of Medicine in 1998. He completed residency training in Obstetrics and Gynecology in 2003. During medical school and residency training, he attended international courses on research methodology, assisted reproduction and gynecological endoscopy. His keen interest to improve his research skills led to the acquisition of a master’s degree in Clinical Trials from the London School of Hygiene and of Tropical Medicine. He completed a three-years clinical and research fellowship program in Reproductive Gynecological Endocrinology and Infertility at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, in 2011. Upon returning to Türkiye, he founded and assumed the directorship of the assisted reproduction unit of the Uludağ University, a highly successful program that grew to over 500 IVF cycles per annum in less than two years. He joined Koç University School of Medicine as a faculty member in 2014.

Prof. Olga Meltem Akay was born in Erzincan in 1970. She graduated from Eregli Anatolian High School in 1988 and Hacettepe University School of Medicine in 1995. She completed her Internal Medicine residency in 2002 and Hematology minor specialization in 2005 at Eskisehir Osmangazi University. In 2007, she worked as a guest researcher at Duke University Hemostasis and Thrombosis Center, USA. She received the title of Associate Professor of Internal Medicine in 2010 and Professor in 2015. Since February 2015, she has been working at Koç University School of Medicine, Department of Hematology.

Prof. Mehmet Kaya received his Ph.D. degree in Medical Physiology from the Istanbul University Istanbul School of Medicine in 1989. He spent almost the entirety of his career at the same school until he moved to Koç University School of Medicine in 2015. Prof. Kaya worked at the National Institute of Health, The Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at Bethesda, Washington DC, between 1994 and 1996. He served as the Director of the Research Fund of Istanbul University between 2007 and 2009 and the Director of Istanbul University Aziz Sancar Research Institute of Experimental Medicine between 2005 and 2009. His research interests include morphology, physiology, and pathology of brain microvessels, and blood-brain barrier (BBB) function in sepsis, hypertension, and epilepsy, as well as BBB manipulation to enable effective drug delivery to central nervous system. Prof. Kaya has about 100 international publications.

He graduated from Hacettepe University School of Medicine, Ankara in 1989 and completed his Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology residency in 1996, in Ankara University, Turkey. He received Master of Public Health degree from Harvard University School of Public Health in 2003. In 2000-2002, he worked as a research fellow in the Clinical Epidemiology division of Infectious Diseases Department at the University of Utah, School of Medicine, USA. He is the editor of books on Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (2007, Springer), Emerging Infectious Diseases: Clinical Case Studies (2014, Elsevier), Antimicrobial Stewardship (2017, Elsevier, ESCMID/ESGAP), and Research and Publication Academy (2022). He served as the executive committee member of Turkish Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (KLİMİK) since 2011, and as the president between 2013 and 2017. He served as the member of executive committee of ESCMID (European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases) between 2018 and 2022, and member of Lancet Commission on COVID-19 during the COVID-19 pandemic. He is a member of Science Academy in Turkey. He currently serves as Head of the Department of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology in Koç University School of Medicine and as the director of Koç University İş Bankası Infectious Diseases Center.