Dr. Canan Dagdeviren

Dr. Canan Dagdeviren is a tenured Associate Professor in the MIT Media Lab’s Program in Media Arts and Sciences, where she leads the Conformable Decoders research group. She is also faculty lead for the MIT Media Lab’s Women’s Health Program, WHx. Her lab develops mechanically adaptive, body-integrated technologies that translate physical patterns from the human body and the natural world into meaningful signals, therapeutic action, and usable energy.

Born in Istanbul, Turkey, Dagdeviren earned her PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where her research focused on patterning techniques and piezoelectric biomedical systems. Her doctoral work spanned flexible mechanical energy harvesters, multifunctional cardiac vessel stents, wearable blood pressure sensors, and stretchable bio-patches for sensing skin mechanics.

Before joining MIT as a faculty member, Dagdeviren was a Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows and conducted postdoctoral research at the MIT David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. There, she worked on multifunctional, minimally invasive brain probes capable of delivering drugs on demand while precisely modulating neural activity for neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease.

At the Media Lab, Dagdeviren’s Conformable Decoders group creates next-generation wearable, implantable, and minimally invasive systems that seamlessly interface with the body. Her work is guided by the belief that the body continuously produces coded physical patterns—through motion, pressure, sound, electrical activity, and biochemical change—and that carefully designed materials and devices can decode these patterns to improve human health.

A major focus of Dagdeviren’s recent work is women’s health innovation. Through WHx and her broader research program, she advances technologies that address long-standing gaps in women’s health, including wearable and personalized systems for early detection, monitoring, and more equitable access to care. Her wearable ultrasound breast patch, inspired in part by the loss of her aunt to breast cancer, reflects this mission: to build technologies that are not only scientifically rigorous, but also accessible, human-centered, and responsive to unmet clinical needs.

Beyond the laboratory, Dagdeviren is an internationally recognized voice for science, health innovation, and women in STEM. She has spoken at global forums including the United Nations, where she has highlighted the importance of inclusive innovation, scientific leadership, and expanding opportunities for women and girls in technology.

Dagdeviren’s research has been featured by major scientific and popular media outlets, including Smithsonian Magazine, Popular Mechanics, CBS News, the LA Times, BBC News, New Scientist, IEEE Spectrum, Physics World, Nature Materials, and others. Her recognitions include MIT Technology Review’s “35 Innovators Under 35,” Forbes “30 Under 30 in Science,” the Science & SciLifeLab Prize for Young Scientists in Translational Medicine, the NSF CAREER Award, and the 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award. In 2023, she was named to the BBC 100 Women list, which recognizes inspiring and influential women from around the world. In 2025, she received tenure at MIT. In 2026, she was inducted into the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering College of Fellows, one of the highest professional distinctions in medical and biological engineering.