"A Success Story: Mehmet Toner
Having discussed traits and factors that bring success, now you will read about another success story. 
Prof. Mehmet Toner is the chair of the Department of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. He graduated from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Istanbul Technical University, and went on to do his Masters and PhD in Life Sciences at MIT. Currently he works in the field of Biomedical Engineering and does research in Biomedical Sciences and Engineering. 
(Q1) Host: How did it all start? How did you choose your undergraduate field in Mechanical Engineering?
Prof. Toner: It was unfortunately decided by my score at the university exam. I wanted to go to Medical School. I was not a good student at the time. And so I couldn’t make it into medical school. As you know the general university exam in Turkey is a very competitive one. I didn’t get into Aerospace Engineering or Electrical Engineering, either. My next choice was mechanical engineering but I didn’t make it into the Gümüşsuyu Mechanical Engineering Department at ITU either. ITU had a new Mechanical Engineering division in Maçka. It was a smaller, new division and my points finally matched Maçka Mechanical engineering. And that’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
Actually, I always liked engineering. I always broke things, pulled them apart. I liked building things with my hands. But I was passionate about making a difference in people’s life. It was initially a disappointment that I didn’t make it into medical school… but I liked mechanical engineering very much. It resonated well with me and so I did very well in college at ITU. 
(Q2) Host: How do you relate your undergraduate education to what you are doing now? How has your degree from mechanical engineering supported you in your field?
Prof. Toner: It’s very relevant. A lot of my work is in biomedical sciences but I use the tools of engineering to solve complex biological problems or clinical problems. So I use it every day and most of the things I do have deep relevance to thermodynamics, that is, understanding the thermal aspects of biological systems. A lot of it also has relevance to engineering design, microfabrication and nanofabrication. Those are all tools of engineering I use daily. And the bulk of the people in the research lab come from different disciplines of engineering, not just mechanical engineering but electrical, chemical engineering, and chemistry, physics and molecular biology. It’s very multidisciplinary but in the core, we use engineering principles, quantitative skills to solve complex problems. 
(Q3) Host: Did you plan your career? Did you start out with a plan? Were you proactive in planning your career? 
Prof. Toner: In those days, I don’t think we had such “cradle to grave” focus on kids from the day they’re born. You know, even in college, I had no clear idea what I wanted to do. I wanted to get out, make some money so I could move on. But before making some money I knew that I wanted to apply to graduate school. So, I corresponded with a former graduate of ITU, Professor Turan Onat. He was at Yale University. I was planning to go to Yale to work on Plasma Physics. I had received acceptance letters from MIT and Yale and so I called him. I had met him only once in my life but he had a big impact on my life. I called him asked him what I should do. And he said “There’s this new field called biomedical engineering at MIT, just starting. Look into that.” I looked into that and I said “Wow! I could actually do something related to medicine.” I had no idea until then. And so that’s how it all started. I decided to go to MIT and get into biomedical engineering.
But I also had wonderful mentors at ITU. That’s why I said the best thing that happened to me was to go to the number two mechanical engineering department at ITU. It wasn’t the primary one but the professors there were absolutely outstanding, committed scientists, committed to education. And there was one person, Aksel Öztürk, and also Abdurrahman Kılıç who influenced me profoundly in those early years. They were very serious, hard-working and focused on young people. There was none of that sometimes typically European, Turkish mindset where there is the big professor and everybody works for them. It was a much more open environment. He was from the University of Michigan. So, that changed my outlook in life. 
So, I didn’t plan much. Nor did I know where I was going to end up. 
(Q4) Host: What drives you? What motivates you?
Prof. Toner: Many things. But what drives me is hard work and curiosity. The best thing about research is… I usually describe it as climbing a mountain no one has ever climbed before, because you’re really trying to understand a problem that no one has either worked on before or has been able to solve. So, you are really going into unknown territory when you do research. 
And people who don’t know research think that you know the next thing that you need to work on. It’s really not like that. You choose the problems you work on. You have to be creative about how you approach them. You have to have the right skills to solve the problem. But what motivates me is solving unsolved problems. Sometimes you solve the problem, it’s not that exciting. You might have thought that it was going to be something huge, big. And it’s not. But that’s okay, you solved it. Sometimes, it really explodes and it’s very exciting. And sometimes we can’t solve it and that’s disappointing. But it’s that unknown that drives me. 
(Q5) Host: What’s an accomplishment that you’re proudest of? 
Prof. Toner: What I’m most proud of are the students I trained and who are very successful. 32 years is a long time. I have trained a lot of students and those students are professors almost everywhere in the world, at MIT and Harvard and Stanford and Rutgers University, University of Minnesota, University of North Carolina Chapel and Duke. Also in Tokyo, in Utrecht, and ETH. So that is the most exciting component; training the next generation. I’m very proud of that. I think I’ve done very well.
(Q6) Host: What are your future goals? What were your career goals when you graduated and how far have you achieved them? 
Prof. Toner: Midway through college, I realized I wanted to be in research. I was enjoying the process of research significantly. I spent all my summers at Istanbul Technical University working with those professors I mentioned. I even published two papers, while I was an undergraduate student, in various journals. So I think I was finding my direction as a scientist at that time. I just didn’t know which discipline. I was in mechanical engineering and wanted to do plasma physics, magneto-hydrodynamics and then, it turned out to be life sciences, biomedical engineering. One thing led to another. But I stayed in the science realm. So in that regard things haven’t changed. 
But my interests are totally different now. I always wanted to be a surgeon and a doctor. But in a funny way, 32 years later, I’m chair, a professor, at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Surgery, even though I’m not a surgeon. I’m actually a professor of surgery without being a surgeon. 
And I do things that make a difference in people’s life. And some of the technologies I developed are now used routinely in pregnancy. For example, prenatal diagnosis for high risk pregnancies is what I’ve developed. And HIV/AIDS monitoring. They’re using it in Africa. And hopefully, our cancer work is going to be translated* into commercialization by a major healthcare company. So, you know, I’ve almost had more impact on more lives than I could have had if I was a surgeon doing things with my own hands every day. I’ve developed things that then disseminate into the entire world, and have an impact. 
So in that regard, in a backdoor way, I have found my passion, I restructured, rephrased my direction. And I’m very happy that I didn’t end up becoming a surgeon but a scientist instead, having a bigger impact in some regards. Actually, bigger impact is not the right word, because it’s not - a different impact. But I’m very happy about that. 
As far as the future… about six, seven, maybe eight years ago I shifted more from pure basic science to more translational work. And that’s when I started getting some of these ideas commercialized or translated. Here we call them spinoffs and patents. The intellectual property we create turns into companies and then the companies hire people and they commercialize it. I don’t participate full time in the company. I just participate as an advisor to help them, guide them. So I’m still in the academic environment doing research but I do a lot of translational work. And in the future, I want to do more of that. I like it. It has a different type of impact. I enjoy it. People find jobs. People enjoy it. And that’s where I’m going in the future. 
" translate to Turkish language