Prof. Engin U. Akkaya is a graduate of the Department of Chemistry, Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey.  He received his Ph.D. in 1989 from the Ohio State University, Chemistry Department, in Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A.  Following postdoctoral research in the Ohio State, UC Santa Barbara and Maryland Universities, he accepted a faculty position in the Chemistry Department of the Middle East Technical University in 1995.   He was promoted to full professorship in 2003.  He worked there until 2007 and then he moved to neighboring Bilkent University in Ankara. 

 In September 2018, he joined to the faculty of the State Key Laboratory of Fine Chemicals, Pharmaceutical Science and Technology in Dalian University of Technology. 

Prof. Engin U. Akkaya is a member of the Turkish Science Academy, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (U.K.).  He is the recipient of a number of national (TUBITAK, Parlar, Elginkan, TUSEB-Aziz Sancar) and international (Czarnik Award, EWHA Lectureship) awards.  His work has been featured on the covers of prestigious journals such as “Journal of the American Chemical Society” and “Angewandte Chemie International Edition”.  He has been invited as the Plenary or Keynote lecturer to many international conferences in the field.  His research interests are activatable photodynamic photosensitizers, altering photodynamic action toward novel cancer drugs, and information processing (smart) therapeutic agents and molecular probes.