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Tugba Kucukkal
Professor
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Dr. Kucukkal earned a Ph.D. in computational chemistry from Clemson University in 2013. Her Ph.D. work involved molecular dynamics simulations using advanced sampling and polarizable force fields for biological systems. She also gained extensive teaching experience at Clemson. Upon completion of the degree, she completed a postdctoral work in biophysics working on modeling impact of rare genetic disease associated mutations on proteins. She then joined the faculty of Gallaudet University.
At Gallaudet, Dr. Kucukkal continues her computational biophysics research with undergraduate and high school students while improving undergraduate education through games and incorporating research and computation into curriculum.
Dr. Kucukkal is the PI of the Drug Discovery Lab at Gallaudet University. Her NIH NIGM award (1R15GM148942-01) seeks to identify novel Plk1 inhibitors to be used for targeted cancer therapies. She and her postdoctoral researcher recently received a supercomputing time grant through NSF ACCESS. Dr. Kucukkal has also recently been awarded Gallaudet President’s Research Excellence award ($50,000).
Dr. Kucukkal is an advocate for increasing diversity in STEM higher degrees and workforce through early exposure to research. Therefore, she has a special interest in involving undergraduate and high school students in research, particularly students from historically underrepresented groups in STEM.
Dr. Kucukkal has been an American Chemical Society Project Seed coordinator and mentor since 2019. Since 2016, I mentored 20 Deaf/HoH undergraduate and high school students at Gallaudet and numerous others at different capacities. Her mentoring efforts are funded by NSF’s EBJ INCLUDES grant as GU PI (2119902) and NIH NLM as GU co-PI (LM014208). One of her previous students won a $130K scholarship from GMU.
Teaching Motto: Everyone can learn!
Research Motto: It's never too early to get involved in research!
Quote: "Diversity without inclusion is exclusion"
List of Publications: Google Scholar Profile
Twitter: @DrKucukkal
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