Burak Okumus

Originally trained as a physicist, Burak has been extensively working on developing new methods for studying biological systems. For his Ph.D. in Biophysics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, he devised novel assays for single-molecule microscopy. During his postdoc at the Harvard Medical School, he was instrumental in developing various microfluidic platforms for single-cell analysis – ranging from quantification of low-abundance molecules with single-molecule accuracy to high-throughput screening. As an interdisciplinary scientist, he worked on a diverse range of subjects and co-authored a number of publications in different scientific journals, including Science, Nature Methods, Nature Communications, JACS and PNAS. Burak is also an inventor on several patent applications. Prior to joining XCellCure, he continued his research career at Illumina and ArcherDX (now Invitae), focusing on NGS (next-generation sequencing) and its applications in molecular diagnostics, liquid biopsy, genomics and oncology.