Tolga Durak

Bio

As MIT’s Managing Director of Environment, Health and Safety (EHS), Dr. Durak acts as the Senior Institutional Administrator for health, safety and environmental programs. Dr. Durak leads EHS Management System composed of 1000+ professionals with designated responsibilities to assure university activities are conducted in compliance with applicable laws, regulations, best practices in addition to supporting and providing oversight for the development, implementation, and monitoring of prevention control strategies and initiatives for the MIT ecosystem including MIT Nuclear Reactor Lab, Bates Linear Accelerator, Haystack / Millstone Observatory, Lincoln Laboratories, Singapore MIT Alliance for Research and Technology, and affiliate institutions.

Research

• Design and fabrication of next gen precision machines and mechanisms with specific emphasis on integrated bio-fabrication and tissue engineering
• Use of medical and health physics to advance human health and environmental justice.

Recent publications

1. Kim, J., Marcus, C., Ono, R., Sadat, D., Mirzazadeh, A., Jens, M., Fernandez, S. V., Zheng, S., Durak, T,. Dagdeviren, C. (2022). Conformable Multimodal Sensory Facemask for Decoding Biological and Environmental Signals. Nature Electronics, 5, 794-807
2. Durak, T. Chapter 14: Innovation Spaces: The New Campus Risk Paradigm. In Kuzmina, O., Hoyle, S. (Eds.), Challenges for Health and Safety in Higher Education and Research Organisations (pp. 304-334). Royal Society of Chemistry
3. Dagdeviren, C., Durak, T., and Sadat D. (2020). Research Resiliency through Lean Labs. Advanced Intelligent Systems, 2000074, 2020.
4. Wong L., Lamere E., Durak T., Galanek M., and Leveson N. (2020). Strengthening Academic Makerspace Safety — Creating a System Model for Hazard Analysis. International Journal of Academic Makerspaces and Making

Teaching

22.015: Radiation and Life

Introduces students to the basics of ionizing and non-ionizing radiation; radiation safety and protection; and an overview of the variety of health physics applications, especially as it pertains to the medical field and to radioactive materials research in academia. Presents basic physics of ionizing and non-ionizing radiation, known effects of the human body, and the techniques to measure those effects. Common radiation-based medical imaging techniques and therapies discussed. Projects, demonstrations, and experiments introduce students to standard techniques and practices in typical medical and MIT research lab environments where radiation is used. Subject can count toward the 6-unit discovery-focused credit limit for first-year students. Limited to 10. Preference to first-year students.

News

• Recycling plastics from research labs
• 3 Questions: Tolga Durak on building a safety culture at MIT
• Improving sanitation for the world’s most vulnerable people
• Fusor workshop inaugurates nuclear makerspace
• MIT initiates mass manufacture of disposable face shields for Covid-19 response
• MIT offers assistance to City of Cambridge duringCovid-19 crisis
• Gamma radiation found ineffective in sterilizingN95 masks
• MIT opens the Sean Collier Care Center for patients with Covid-19
• MIT team races to fill Covid-19-related ventilator shortage
• Lean lab approach enables quick research ramp down
• Making hand sanitizer for front-line campus workers
• Building a framework for remote making