Mustafa Unal, a PhD candidate in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, recently received the Society for Applied Spectroscopy’s (SAS) Barbara Stull Graduate Student Award.
The award is given annually to only one graduate student in recognition of outstanding research in the area of spectroscopy.
Unal works under the supervision of Ozan Akkus, the Leonard Case Jr. Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. His research is at the interface of engineering, biomedical optics and orthopedics.
During his PhD studies, he has developed novel Raman spectroscopic techniques for assessment of biological tissue quality. For the first time in the literature, Unal has used Raman spectroscopy to assess hydration status of bone and cartilage, a novel tool to assess bone and cartilage quality.
With this award, Unal has received five prestigious awards recently, and is recognized consistently as a promising young investigator in the fields of musculoskeletal and biomedical spectroscopy research by major leading scientific societies in these fields.