Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Research focus

Machine learning in biomedical imaging

Education

Ph.D. Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2014
B.S. Mechanical Engineering, Bogazici University, 2010

Mehmet Kurt joined Mechanical Engineering last winter from the Stevens Institute of Technology where he was an assistant professor. He was a postdoctoral scholar of bioengineering at Stanford University until 2016.

As the director of Kurtlab at the UW, Kurt is developing advanced neuroimaging tools and multi-scale computational models to understand the mechanobiology of the human brain. Recent projects include nonlinear dynamics of the human brain during head impacts, using wall motion imaging to study aneurysm stability, and measuring brain tissue stiffness in vivo. His research is currently funded by multiple grants from the NSF, NIH and DoD. Kurt’s awards include the NSF CAREER Award, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Postdoctoral Fellowship, Thrasher Research Foundation Early Career Award, Provost’s Early Career Award for Research Excellence and the Thomas Bernard Hall Prize.