Gokberk Kabacaoglu, Ph.D.

At the Flatiron Institute, Gokberk Kabacaoglu held a joint affiliation with both CCM and CCB, where he was a Flatiron research fellow in the Biophysical Modeling group. His research focused on the interdisciplinary study of cell biomechanics. In particular, he developed a computational tool for the simulations of many elastic filaments that model microtubules, the skeleton of animal cells. Then, using the software he built with his colleagues, Gokberk investigated several interesting biophysical phenomena in cells. Those included: (1) the role of centrosome migration inside a cell during cell division; (2) how microtubules organize the cell division; and (3) how microtubules induce flow inside a cell, and the structure of the flow.

Gokberk received a doctorate in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin under the supervision of George Biros. There, he built a software to simulate the flows of red blood cells through microfluidic devices.

Currently Gokberk is an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at his alma mater, Bilkent University in Turkey.