Tugce Ipek had a degree of Biology from Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey in 2013. She has completed her MSc degree in Cell and Tissue Engineering at Keele University with Professor Ying Yang in 2015. Her project involved constructing both 2D and 3D in vitro model to investigate the fibrosis for glaucoma disease. Then, she joined to the platform called European Dry Eye Network as a PhD student which was funded by European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant, at mainly Aston University in Birmingham (UK) but also spent her time in partner institutions; Complutense University of Madrid (Spain) and Opetgra Eye Hospital in Berlin (Germany). Her project investigated the possible factors of cataract surgery which could be leading to dry eye post-surgery, supervised by Dr Clare O’Donnell and Professor

James Wolffsohn. She used an in vitro dry eye model to test some of those procedures in cataract surgery such as light from the operating microscope and antiseptic toxicity to investigate which procedure has a role postoperative dry eye.

Currently, Dr Ipek has joined to KCL to the Green Lab as a research associate to investigate epithelial invagination in ectodermal organs in mouse development.