Dr. Sertel earned her B.S. is Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Koc University in Istanbul, Turkey. Her combined interest in engineering and medical sciences led her to pursue an M.S. degree in Biomedical Engineering from Bogazici University. She then went on to receive her PhD in Neuroscience from University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and received the best dissertation award in her graduating year. Dr. Sertel has been conducting human electrophysiological research in rare neurosurgical patients for the past 7 years. The major focus of her dissertation research was to understand audiovisual speech perception, specifically how the human brain integrates auditory information from the voice together with visual information from the mouth movements of the talker during a conversation. Her current research as a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Adeen Flinker’s laboratory at NYU School of Medicine focuses on understanding how the brain distinguishes self-generated vocal sounds from external sounds and how auditory feedback from hearing one’s self speak guides fluent speech production. Using direct cortical recordings, Dr. Sertel is investigating how humans monitor their own speech and if delayed auditory feedback can provide therapeutic approaches for speech disorders such as stuttering.
