Arzu Colak

Arzu Çolak completed her B.Sc. degree in Physics at Istanbul University (Turkey), and her M.Sc. degree in Physics at Boğaziçi University (Turkey). She received her Ph.D. degree in Physics at the University of Twente (the Netherlands) in 2013. During her Ph.D. study under supervision of Prof. Harold J. W. Zandvliet and Prof. Bene Poelsema, she aimed at providing a better understanding of the factors that are of prime importance for magnitude of adhesion forces between surfaces in nanoscale with atomic force microscopy (AFM) to enable development of new lithography technologies and tools. On completion of her Ph.D. study, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (France) under guidance of Prof. Marie-Paule Pileni, and investigated mechanical properties of three-dimensional self-assembled metal nanocrystals as promising candidates for flexible and bendable components of next generation electronics, circuits and devices. After her study in France, she moved to Germany to work with Prof. Roland Bennewitz as a postdoctoral researcher at the Nanotribology research group of the INM – Leibniz Institute for New Materials where she investigated mechanical properties of synthetic interpenetrating network (IPN) hydrogels at the length scale of cell mechanosensing with using atomic force microscopy-based single molecule force microscopy. In 2018, she started working with Prof. Mehmet Z. Baykara as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California Merced (U.S.A.) where she used atomic force microscopy to characterize structure and mechanics of early stage of biofilm formation of the medically important human fungal pathogen, Candida albicans. Since July 2020, she has conducted independent research as an Assistant Professor at the Physics department of Clarkson University (U.S.A.) in the field of surface and interface physics with scanning probe microscopy based methods.