Mert Gezek

Honors & Service

Honors & Awards

  • First Place, Art in Science Image Competition, UMass Lowell Core Research Facilities (2025)
  • Member, Alpha Alpha Alpha (Tri-Alpha), the National Honor Society for First-Generation College Students (2025)
  • Honored Student, Yıldız Technical University (2021)
  • Best Paper Award, Academy of Romanian Scientists International Scientific Conference "Applications of Chemistry in Nanosciences and Biomaterials Engineering" (2021)
  • TÜBİTAK 2209-A Research Project Support Program for Undergraduate Students, grant for the project "Development of Bioink for Bone Tissue Engineering Applications" (2019)
False-colored scanning electron microscope image of a tissue engineering scaffold. A pale green, swirled, crater-like structure sits in the center of a blue porous surface.
Eye of the Hurricane: A Hidden Calm in a Tissue Scaffold. First Place, Art in Science Image Competition, UMass Lowell Core Research Facilities, 2025.

Service & Mentoring

Service

  • Journal reviewer for Biomaterials, Biotechnology Letters, Annals of Biomedical Engineering, and Chemical Engineering Journal (2024 to present)
  • Student Contact, Society for Biomaterials, Tissue Engineering Special Interest Group (2023 to present)
  • Symposium Assistant, MRS Fall Meeting, Boston (2023, 2024)

Memberships

  • Society for Biomaterials, member (2023 to present)
  • Materials Research Society, student member (2023)

Teaching

  • Graduate teaching assistant, Department of Chemical Engineering, UMass Lowell (2021 to 2024): Biomaterials Science & Engineering, Materials Science & Engineering, and Fundamentals of Electricity.
  • Guest lecture on biofabrication and biomaterials in CHEN 5460.

Mentoring

  • Research mentor in the Camci-Unal Lab. I have trained and supervised four undergraduate researchers.
  • Research mentor in the NSF REU program (Summer 2023). I mentored an undergraduate student through a 10-week project on origami-inspired foldable paper-hydrogel scaffolds. The student presented the work as a poster at the BMES Annual Meeting (Seattle, 2023), and I am a co-author.