Hande Yuceer Korkmaz

I am currently in the final stages of my PhD in the Advanced Neurological Sciences Doctoral Program at Istanbul University and planing to graduate in two months. My academic background includes a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and a Master’s degree in Neuroscience. For the past seven years, I have also served as a full-time research assistant at the Aziz Sancar Institute of Experimental Medicine, Istanbul University where I have contributed to various projects focusing on the neuroimmunological mechanisms underlying neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases, such as autoimmune encephalitis, epilepsy, and Alzheimer’s disease. In addition, I have had the privilege of mentoring and teaching many junior researchers during this time.

Under the mentorship of Prof. Erdem Tuzun, a leading expert in neuroimmunology in Turkey, I gained extensive experience with the animal models of many neurological diseases. My technical proficiency includes advanced skills in stereotaxic surgery, immunohistochemical staining, and animal behavior analysis. Additionally, I have experience in a range of laboratory techniques, including ELISA, qPCR, peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) isolation, flow cytometry, Western blot, and cell-based assays. I am deeply passionate about studying animal behavior under both normal and pathological conditions and have played a pivotal role in establishing an animal behavior laboratory at my home institute.

Having been awarded the Fulbright scholarship and national TUBİTAK 2214 fellowship, I carried out my PhD experiments in Dr. Abid Hussaini’s lab at the Taub Institute, Columbia University for 1 year. During this fellowship, I developed expertise in in vivo electrophysiology, recording place cells in the hippocampal CA1 region using 16-channel microdrives that I assembled. Over the course of the year, I performed more than 100 stereotaxic surgeries and recorded over 2000 sessions from CA1 and MEC in freely moving mice. I also gained proficiency in techniques such as hippocampal microinjections, ICV AAV injections into pups, cardiac perfusions, microdissections, and histological staining protocols.

My PhD thesis investigates the NMDAR mediated role of cerebral chemokines in normal aging and Alzheimer’s disease. Specifically, I observed that disruptions in CCR2 receptor functioning impair spatial memory and place cell coding. My experiments compared outcomes at different ages of wild-type B6 mice, CCR2 knockout mice and APPKI/S305N Alzheimer's Disease model mice. 

In addition to my core PhD research, during my time at Columbia University, I examined impaired neuronal excitatory-inhibitory balance in a mouse model of passive transfer autoimmune encephalitis, induced by ICV infusion of IgGs purified from anti-NMDAR encephalitis patient sera. My findings revealed reduced NMDAR expression and increased glial activity, corroborating results I had previously obtained at Istanbul University using a rat model of the same disease.

Again during my time at Columbia, I also conducted experiments on the ICV administration of multitarget drugs for Alzheimer's disease, developed by Dr. Çağhan Kızıl's team. These drugs were initially tested in zebrafish, and I evaluated the behavioral outcomes in mice. This study, which received the Columbia University Translational Therapeutics Pilot Award, is ongoing.

I am currently completing the Python and MATLAB analysis of my recordings and finalizing my dissertation.

BA in Psychology, Istanbul Bilgi University

MSc in Neuroscience, Istanbul University

PhD in Advanced Neurological Sciences, Istanbul University