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Dr. Gurkan is currently a Professor at °µÍø½ûÇø’s College of Aeronautics and Engineering, where she leads the Computer Engineering Technology and Cybersecurity Engineering programs. In addition, she is the director and Point of Contact of the National Center for Academic Excellence for Cyber Defense (NCAE-CD) and the Ohio Cyber Range Regional Programming Center at the °µÍø½ûÇø. She has over 20 years of experience in software-defined networking (SDN), networking infrastructure, sensor systems, and cybersecurity.

Over the course of her career, she has authored over 85 journal and conference papers and has served as Principal Investigator (PI) or Co-PI on multiple major research grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Security Agency (NSA), the Department of Energy (DOE), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), collectively totaling several million dollars in funding. She served as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement from 2009 to 2017, and has held leadership roles in organizing prominent conferences, including as Technical Program Chair for the software-defined networking track of the 2021 IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN). She is regularly invited to serve on review panels for funding agencies such as the NSF and DOE and has delivered invited talks and participated in expert panels at various academic and industry venues. She is the founding faculty advisor of Cyber Citizen Club and the Formula SAE student club.

Her research lab at the °µÍø½ûÇø has an established direct network connectivity to the nationwide testbeds, the , , and advanced software and virtualized testbed capabilities to launch sophisticated cyber competition and network security infrastructure for research and education.