Cansu Uluşeker is a Mathematical Modeller with over 3 years of experience after her PhD in academia. Cansu is currently enrolled on the research group of Jan Kreft at the University of Birmingham as a Research Associate to model AMR dynamics in rivers in India within the AMRflows UK-India project. She will develop a mathematical model to understand Antimicrobial Resistance dynamics in the river polluted environment and to predict antibiotic concentration in the rivers in India. This work will be conducted in collaboration with IIT Madras. Cansu will also support IIT Madras colleagues with the river engineering, and sediment transport in Musi and Adyar rivers.
Cansu has a lot of significant professional experience as a mathematical modeller. She worked on several different problems to understand regulation in biological systems and on using mathematical models to understand and predict biological phenomena. She has the ability to take quantitative considerations for various environmental conditions. Because of her skills and educational background, Cansu can produce productive and long-lasting results for practical problems in biology. She has been involved in many collaborative research projects financed by the European Commission. She works well with interdisciplinary groups and can provide consultations for international corporations.
Cansu earned a BSc degree in Elementary Mathematics Education back in 2011 at METU, Turkey. Through her course, she developed a passionate interest in mathematics and its applications in different fields.
After she graduated, Cansu spent a year working as the Assistant Teacher at Comenius I.E.S Manuel De Falla Cadiz, Spain. She taught mathematics and science courses to students aged from 10 to 18. Then she decided to pursue a Joint Erasmus Mundus MSc run by 4 European universities in mathematical engineering with a specialization in life and social sciences. During her study, she focused on the development of predictive mathematical models in synthetic and systems biology. Her thesis work was devoted to the modelling of leptin hormone for the insulin-glucose system for diabetes Type 2.
Cansu was granted a PhD position at the University of Trento in collaboration with the Microsoft Research Center for Computational and Systems Biology. During her PhD, she developed a framework to simulate and analyse biological regulatory systems by integrating different layers of regulatory information. She was involved in two major projects. First, she applied a multi-level modelling approach to build a closed-loop whole-body model of glucose homeostasis, Moreover, Cansu modelled the transcriptional regulatory network of phosphate starvation response in Escherichia coli. Here, she gained experience in the wet lab on synthetic promoter design and measuring promoter expression for quantitative analysis. These works led to two landmark papers.
For her most recent 3 years of work as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the JPIAMR project Genegas at the University of Stavanger in Norway. Cansu had successfully nourished her passion and became acquainted with antimicrobial resistance. She did this by conducting research about developing a mathematical model to better understand and predict the spreading of resistance genes in the wastewater treatment plant. Cansu also contributed to the development of graduate students and the teaching activities.
Cansu’s fascination with the interactions between microorganisms with each other, and the environment is demonstrated by her two postdoctoral fellowship works in Norway and UK. Cansu plans to continue her research by making quantitative predictions that can be challenged by data to better understand nature. She wants to engage more with interdisciplinary groups and thought leaders in international stakeholders. She is open to challenges, conversations, and an exchange of ideas. Her long-term goal is to get a tenure track position and apply for research grants.
She wants to use her commitment and drive to bring more dignity contribution to human knowledge. After getting a tenure track position, she will use this opportunity to start her own group and wet lab to make a valuable addition to quantitative considerations in biology from a systems point of view.