News Dr Korkut Uygun: Engineering the Future of Organ Transplants 09.12.2025

On Monday 8 December Dr Korkut Uygun, a professor of biomedical engineering at Harvard, gave a fascinating online talk to several dozen interested GCSE and Sixth Formers about developments in cryogenically preserving donated organs for transplant surgeries.  Current technologies limit the lifetime of donated organs to hours.  If organs could be preserved for longer times, then they could travel across the world to perfectly matched patients, ensuring more successful transplants and more lives saved.  The fascinating talk illustrated how biological and chemical knowledge could be applied through the lens of an engineer to solve medical problems.  Many thanks to Luna, Year 11 who helped organise the talk.