Mehmet Kurt

Mehmet Kurt is an Associate Professor at the University of Washington in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Radiology. He directs Kurtlab, a multidisciplinary research group focused on brain mechanobiology and advanced neuroimaging.

• B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering, Bogazici University (2010)
• Ph.D. in Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2014)
• Postdoctoral Scholar, Department of Bioengineering at Stanford University (2014–2016)
• Assistant Professor at Stevens Institute of Technology (2016–2022)

Research interests span brain biomechanics, neuromechanics imaging, nonlinear systems, and smart biomedical devices. His work integrates advanced neuroimaging tools (e.g., 3D aMRI, 7T MRI, MR Elastography) with multi-scale computational models to study traumatic brain injury (TBI), Alzheimer's Disease, Chiari Malformation I, intracranial aneurysms, and hydrocephalus. Key projects include:

• Investigating perfusion-mechanics coupling in the hippocampus
• Developing 3D amplified MRI (aMRI) for intrinsic brain motion quantification
• Characterizing brain tissue viscoelasticity across age groups
• Designing patient-specific computational fluid dynamics simulations
• Creating AI-driven tumor segmentation frameworks

Scientific awards include:

• NSF Vizzie Best Scientific Visualization Award (2018)
• Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Postdoctoral Fellowship
• Thrasher Research Foundation Early Career Award
• Provost's Early Career Award for Research Excellence
• Fortune Magazine's 40 Under 40 in Turkey (2020)
• Annals of Biomedical Engineering Editor's Choice Award

Grants from NSF, NIH, and DoD support his work. He actively mentors LGBTQ+ students in STEM through programs like PRIDE and Kurtlab, which trains undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs in neuroimaging and biomedical device development.