Gurkan Guntas

Gurkan Guntas has over 20 years of work experience in the biotechnology industry. Gurkan is currently the Director and Associate Director at Marengo Therapeutics since 2021. Prior to that, they were the Associate Director at Elstar Therapeutics from 2020-2019 and the Principal Scientist at Elstar Therapeutics Inc. from 2019-2014. From 2014-2010, they were the Principal Scientist at Pfizer. From 2010-2005, they were a Staff Scientist at the University of North Carolina, where they constructed and screened computationally designed loop libraries of the Fn3 domain and established a phage display platform for the directed evolution of LOV2 domain. From 2005-2000, they were a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where they were the project leader of the first study that combined high-resolution structural modeling with high-throughput screening and developed a novel high-throughput bacterial screen. Finally, from 2000-2005, they were a Research Assistant at Johns Hopkins University, where they engineered allosteric fusions of maltose-binding protein (MBP) and β-lactamase, redesigned the maltose-binding site of MBP to bind non-native sucrose, and developed a novel method to introduce random double stranded breaks to DNA using S1 Nuclease.

Gurkan Guntas has a diverse educational background. Gurkan earned a Bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from Boğaziçi University between 1995 and 2000. Gurkan then went on to receive a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from The Johns Hopkins University between 2000 and 2005. Most recently, they completed a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst between 2017 and 2021.