PI BIOGRAPHY

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Mert Gur is a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) School of Medicine (SOM) Department of Computational and Systems Biology (CSB) and a tenured Associate Professor in the Istanbul Technical University (ITU) Mechanical (ME) Engineering Department (ME). He earned his B.S. degree from the Middle East Technical University ME in 2006 and his Ph.D. degree in Computational Science and Engineering at Koc University in 2010. After graduation, he began working as postdoctoral associate in the Pitt SOM CSB, and in 2012, he was jointly appointed as a Lecturer in the Pitt Department of Mechanical Engineering and Material Science (MEMS). In 2014, he joined Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis as a postdoctoral fellow. He became a faculty member of ITU ME at the rank of Assistant Professor in 2015, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2021, and received his tenure in 2022. He was a Visiting Faculty Scholar in Pitt SOM and in the University of California Berkeley, College of Chemistry throughout summers 2016 and 2017, respectively.

Mert held multiple leadership positions at ITU, serving as Vice Dean of the Graduate School of Science, Engineering, and Technology (GSSET) from 2018 to 2020 and the Vice Dean School of Mechanical Engineering (SME) from 2020 to 2022. He simultaneously carried out both Vice Dean roles for six months in 2020, accumulating nearly five years of Vice Dean experience. In 2022 he stepped down from the ITU SME Vice Dean position to join the Pitt SOM CSB as Visiting Associate Professor for his sabbatical. In his seven years at ITU (2015-2022), he has been a member of 17 different commissions and acted as the coordinator and vice coordinator of mechanical engineering minor and double major programs. He holds positions as the Advisory Committee Member of the National High Performance Computing Center (UHeM) and a Board of Directors Member of the Research and Application Center for Critical and Functional Materials. 
Mert possesses extensive teaching and mentoring experience. From 2015 to 2022, he taught 42 courses to 2,528 students across nine undergraduate and four graduate programs at ITU, averaging six courses and 361 students per year. In the US, he taught at Pitt MEMS in 2012 and Pitt CSB departments in 2023. Additionally, he has been screening and reviewing applications for the Computational Biomedicine and Biotechnology masters program. To date, Mert has mentored six M.S. and 18 undergraduate students. He is currently mentoring four undergraduate students, as well as five M.S. and five Ph.D. students, across the Molecular Biology-Genetics and Biotechnology, Mechanical Engineering, Heat-Fluid, and Materials and Manufacture Graduate Programs.

Mert brings over 16 years of experience and a proven record of innovation in applying molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and coarse-grained elastic network models to address cutting-edge scientific challenges in biology, biotechnology, biomedicine, and pharmaceutical and health sciences. His expertise spans a wide range of protein classes, such as enzymes, motors, and membrane proteins, as well as peptide design, and includes development of novel methods for enhanced sampling and free-energy calculation. Mert excels in conducting MD simulations of large biomolecular systems (up to multimillion-atoms), performing simulations with lengths several orders longer than typical, such as in silico pulling experiment at loading rates akin to laboratory conditions, and handling big data generated by such simulations. His extensive experience in analyzing large datasets, protein-protein interactions, and designing peptide-based drugs has further solidified his standing in the field. To date, Mert and his research group have performed over 350 M core hours of MD simulations at premier Tier-0 supercomputers, including Anton and Summit (USA), Mahti (Finland),  and Marconi100 (Italy). 

Mert Gur acted as a principal investigator (PI)/co-PI in 19 scientific projects, consisting of 11 Turkey funded, three USA funded, and two European Union (EU) funded, and one internationally funded grants and secured a total of $2,338,775 worth of external and $30,596 of internal funding, either as direct budget or high-performance computing products and services. He also participated as co-investigator or collaborator in nationally and internationally funded projects, including an NIH-funded project (R01) since August 2022.

So far, Mert Gur published two book chapters and 30 journal papers including those published in prominent journals such Nature, Science, and Nature Communications. Mert was awarded with the Fellowship for Outstanding Scientist Returning to Turkey (Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey, TUBITAK) in 2015, Outstanding Young Scientist Award (Turkish Academy of Sciences) in 2016, Young Scientist Award (Science Academy) and National Outstanding Researchers Fellowship (TUBITAK) in 2022.