Mehmet Toner is Professor of Surgery (Biomedical Engineering) at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and is the founding director of the NIH BioMEMS Resource Center.

Dr. Toner was born in Istanbul, Turkey in July 1958.  Dr. Toner received a Bachelor of Science degree from Istanbul Technical University in 1983 and an M.S. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1985, both in Mechanical Engineering.  He subsequently completed his Ph.D. in Medical Engineering at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) in 1989.  He joined the faculty at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School as an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering in 1989, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1996, and to Professor in 2002.  Dr. Toner has a joint appointment as a Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at the Harvard-MIT Division of HST. 

Dr. Toner serves as a member of the Senior Scientific Staff at the Shriners Hospital for Children.  He is a co-founder of the Center for Engineering in Medicine, and founder of the NIH BioMicroElectroMechanical Systems (BioMEMS) Resource Center at the MGH.  He is also the Director of the Biomedical Engineering Research and Education Program for physicians at MGH.  Dr Toner is a member of many national and international professional committees, and serves on the editorial board of many scientific journals including Cryobiology, Cryo-Letters, Cell Preservation Technology, Annual Reviews in Biomedical Engineering, and Nanomedicine.  He has served on many national and international panels and review boards, including National Institutes of Health (NIH) Study Sections, National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award panels, NSF Nanoscience panel, NIH Nanotechnology and Tissue Engineering panel, and several DARPA strategic planning panels.

In 1994, he was recognized by the YC Fung Faculty Award in Bioengineering from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). In 1995, he received the Whitaker Foundation Special Opportunity Award.  In 1997, he won the John F and Virginia B Taplin Faculty Fellow Award given by Harvard and MIT.  In 1998, Dr. Toner was selected to become a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering.  Dr. Toner serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of multiple biotechnology and medical device companies, and has been involved as a scientific founder of multiple startup companies. 

Dr. Toner is internationally recognized for his multidisciplinary approach to biomedical problems in the areas of low-temperature biology and biostabilization, tissue engineering and artificial organs, and microsystems bioengineering in clinical medicine and biology.  Dr Toner has received funding from NIH, NSF, DARPA, Whitaker Foundation, National Textile Center, and many industrial outfits.  Dr. Toner’s former students and trainees hold positions at many prestigious universities and companies, including MIT, Harvard, UCSD, UC Irvine, UC Davis, Rutgers U, University of Minnesota, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Amsterdam, Keio University, University of Alberta, Amgen, Bristol-Myers, and BioLife.. He has published over 200 scientific publications and has delivered over 350 invited and scientific meeting presentations.