Research group Volkan Özenci

Volkan’s group focuses on improving laboratory diagnostics, and understanding infectious disease epidemiology.

Despite advances in medical science, infectious diseases remain one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. In the light of rapidly evolving pathogens, there is an urgent need for efficient infectious disease diagnosis.

Our lab employs a unique multidisciplinary approach in our research.

Our research spans the following areas:

  1. Development, evaluation, and implementation of unique methods in clinical microbiology.
  2. Clinical mycology.
  3. Innovations in clinical diagnostics.
  4. Innovations to promote an environmentally friendly laboratory.
  5. Research on Artificial Intelligence in clinical microbiology and clinical mycology.

We endeavor to improve the current state of clinical microbiology through the evaluation of analytical and clinical performance of new microbiological diagnostic methods, and development of clinical microbiology methods for rapid detection, identification, and antibiotic susceptibility testing of clinically relevant microorganisms. We also study the epidemiology of severe infectious diseases, as well as bacteria-fungi interactions as we believe that increased understanding of these areas is instrumental in driving improvements to the infection diagnostics landscape.

Overview of Volkan Özenci group research projects in the context of clinical microbiology diagnosis.
Overview of Volkan Özenci group research projects in the context of clinical microbiology diagnosis. Photo: Alicia Wong

Publications

Selected publications

Staff and contact

Group leader

All members of the group

Teaching assignments

Course director:

  1. “Clinical Microbiology” course for medical students.
  2. “Applied clinical microbiology in invasive infectious diseases” elective course for medical students.

Teaching:

Undergraduate/ graduate:  medial students, dental students, nursing students, biomedical analysts students.

Clinical supervision of interns/residents: medical doctors, microbiologists, biomedical laboratory scientists.

Alumni

Mohammed Almuhayawi (PhD, 2018)

Osman Altun (PhD, 2020)

Co-supervised postgraduate students:

Salah Zangenah (PhD, 2016)

Hassan Mohammed Alkharaan (PhD, 2021)

Khaled Almanei (PhD, ongoing)