Aygul received her Bachelor’s degree in Bioengineering at Yildiz Technical University and her Master’s degree in Material Science and Nanotechnology at Bilkent University. During the master studies, she mainly worked on the stability of self-assembling peptide amphiphile nanofiber gels against enzymatic degradation, and the potential implications of degradation rates on the controlled release of scaffold-encapsulated molecules. In February 2018, she started working as a PhD student at IBE MERLN.

Her project aims to develop a new type of hybrid biomaterials for bone tissue regeneration using inorganic nanosized building blocks (nanoparticles of ~100 nm) and hydrophilic linkers that self-assemble in a 3D matrix. Inorganic nanoparticles based on mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) are proposed as ideal building blocks within these constructs as they are bioactive, improve mechanical and biological properties of incorporating polymers, and can controllably release various types of cargo.