Biographical Sketch

Metin Akay received his B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey in 1981 and 1984, respectively, and a Ph.D. degree from Rutgers University in 1990. He also received an Honorary PhD degree from the Aalborg University, Silesian University of Technology and Pecs University. He also received a Honorary Professor position from the Technical University of Crete.

He is currently the founding chair of the new Biomedical Engineering Department and the John S. Dunn professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Houston. He is currently the Past President and the Chief Ambassador of IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. He is also Chair of the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering (IAMBE) and the Chair of IEEE BRAIN

He has played a key role in promoting biomedical education in the world by writing and editing several books, editing several special issues of prestigious journals, including the Proc of IEEE, and giving several keynotes and plenary talks at international conferences, symposiums, and workshops regarding emerging technologies in biomedical engineering. He is the founding editor-in-chief of the Biomedical Engineering Book Series published by the Wiley and IEEE Press and the Wiley Encyclopedia of Biomedical Engineering. He was the first steering committee chair of the IEEE Trans on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics.

He established the IEEE EMBS Special Topic Conference on Neural Engineering. and furthermore serves on several NIH and NSF review panels. Dr. Akay is a recipient of the IFMBE Zworykin award, IEEE EMBS Early Career and Service awards as well an IEEE Third Millennium Medal and is a fellow of IEEE, the Institute of Physics (IOP), the American Institute of Medical Biological Engineering (AIMBE), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

His Neural Engineering and Informatics Lab is interested in developing a novel Brain Chip for precision medicine and an intelligent wearable system for monitoring and detecting coronary artery disease. In addition, his lab is currently investigating the effect of maternal alcohol and nicotine intake on the health risk in newborns.