Canan Dağdeviren was born on 4 May 1985 in Istanbul as the first daughter of Mine and Cavit Dağdeviren. Originally from Sivas, Dağdeviren moved to Kocaeli due to her family’s work and completed her primary and middle school education there.

Educational and Academic Career

In 2007, Dağdeviren graduated from the Hacettepe University Department of Physics Engineering. In the same year, she began her master’s studies in Materials Science and Engineering at Sabancı University and graduated in 2009. After completing her master’s, she won the Fulbright scholarship, one of the most prestigious scholarship programs in the world, and moved to the United States of America.

Dağdeviren began her doctoral studies in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), one of the research-focused universities of USA. During her doctoral studies, she conducted research on flexible and wearable electronic devices piezoelectric materials and energy harvesting on. She completed her PhD in 2014.

Dağdeviren continued her postdoctoral academic career at Harvard University where she served as a Junior Fellow and became the first Turkish science to be selected as a Junior Fellow at Harvard University. In 2017, she moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where she was appointed as the LG Career Development Professor in the field of Arts and Sciences. She currently leads her own research group, Conformable Decoders, at the MIT Media Lab.

Scientific Research and Inventions

Canan Dağdeviren’s research has been guided by health challenges experienced in close. Inspired by her grandfather who died due to heart failure she developed a battery-free wearable heart chip. She has also worked on a device capable of detecting skin cancer.

In recent years, she developed a bra-shaped wearable ultrasound device for the early detection of breast cancer, facilitating earlier diagnosis by enabling regular screening.

Additionally, she has developed projects including mini neurologic systems that deliver local drug delivery within the brain and flexible piezoelectric devices capable of monitoring digestive system motility.

Awards and Achievements

Canan Dağdeviren has received numerous national and international awards for her work.

- In 2014 she became the first Turk to be included in Forbes Magazine’s “30 Under 30 Scientists” list.

- In 2015 she was named in MIT Technology Review’s “35 Under 35 Innovators” list.

- In 2021 she was awarded the Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF).

- In 2023 she was selected by the BBC as one of the “100 Women”.

- She has won the Science & SciLifeLab Prize, known as the “Nobel for Young People”, in the field of medicine.

To date she has published 25 article holds four patents and has won more than 30 national and international awards.