Erdem Karatekin, PhD

After obtaining his B.S. degree in chemical engineering from the University of Louisville, KY (where he studied thanks to a swimming scholarship) Dr. Karatekin went on to study soft matter physics and chemistry at Columbia University with N. J. Turro and B. O'Shaughnessy where he obtained his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1999. He then gradually moved toward studying dynamics of lipid membranes, first during his post-doctoral stay at the Curie Institute (with F. Brochard-Wyart, 2000-2002), and later as research faculty at the Laboratoire de Dynamique Membranaire (CNRS FRE 3146), both in Paris, France.

Thanks to a long-term leave from the CNRS, he was a visiting research scientist in the laboratory of Dr. J. E. Rothman in Cell Biology at Yale during 2008-2011. He joined the Department of Cellular and Molecular Physiology as a faculty in 2012.