By 6 a.m., Olcaytu Hatipoglu is already in the pool. Between morning and afternoon swim practices, she juggles a full schedule of engineering classes, then heads to the lab whenever possible, where she spends much of her time working with optical imaging systems, microscopes, and data analysis tools. For Hatipoglu, a senior at Tulane, this rhythm has become routine: balancing the demands of Division I athletics with the intensity of research and academics. Originally from Türkiye, she came to New Orleans on a swimming scholarship but, over time, built a life that extends far beyond competition: the one that brings together engineering, scientific curiosity, and a deep commitment to growth both in and out of the water.

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When Olcaytu first arrived, she was pre-med, pursuing a degree in Biomedical Engineering. She was deeply interested in the intersection of medicine and science, and she applied her engineering background to medical school. Her plan was Tulane University, pre-med and swimming, medical school, and residency. However, the more she learned, the more she found herself gravitating toward something beyond solving mathematical problems and working with physics formulas. It was the process of discovery itself that fascinated her, and more importantly, the bigger question: Where can my research be applied? At the time, she realized she would love to continue her studies in math and physics and engage in intensive research. Still, she recognized that tackling real-life challenges and questions steered her away from the primary plan toward Biomedical Engineering and eventually toward a minor in Electrical Engineering.

 

At the end of her first year, she cold-emailed professors who had taught her in general electives to talk about the classes and her interests with the major. Those conversations led to others with graduate students and faculty, and eventually to her first wet-lab experience. There, she learned to shadow other upper-level students conducting research and had the opportunity to mingle with graduate students to understand the field, graduate school, and the research they were conducting.

 

In her junior year, after excelling in her Biomedical Optics course, her professor, Dr. Gelfand, referred her to Dr. Brown, who, at the time, ran a translational biophotonics lab at Tulane University. A few more coffee chats and she found herself in the biomedical engineering lab doing more hands-on work and realized that her experience with the wet lab in the past truly helped her to lay the foundation for work ethics in the lab, gave her a great start, and taught her how to work collaboratively with others. The research she did in the lab eventually inspired her Honors Thesis, which is now focused on AI-augmented structured illumination microscopy for prostate cancer diagnosis, using artificial intelligence to enhance imaging techniques that could help clinicians detect cancer more accurately and earlier.

 

Seeing her performance in the Optics class and Dr. Brown’s lab, Dr. Gelfand once again recommended her for a competitive Vanderbilt Internship in Biophotonics for Emerging Scholars, and she was accepted. Last summer, she spent ten weeks in Nashville, dedicating over thirty hours a week to her own independent microscopy project using UV surface excitation. She says this was the experience that finally made everything click. "The internship gave me a sense of what it is like to work independently on my own project while also collaborating in the lab." For the first time, she wasn't assisting someone else's research, but she was leading her own. She took full responsibility for her work and loved it! This research is currently being prepared for publication, with Olcaytu listed as the second author. She shared that although the experience itself is meaningful, the fact that she was recommended for this internship is something more than that: “It shows how one professor’s encouragement directly opened a major research opportunity for me.”

 

All of that motivated her to apply to graduate school after her summer at Vanderbilt University. Currently, Olcaytu is carefully navigating the graduate school application process. “As an international student, application fees add up quickly, and fee waivers for international applicants are limited,” she shared. She couldn’t risk spending a lot of money and time in the void as a student-athlete on scholarship. So, she chose to apply only to programs where she had personally connected with the faculty beforehand, where the research genuinely aligned with her interests, and where the responses made her feel she would belong. She applied to just five programs and spent weeks refining each application. "I edited and refined each application over ten times to make sure it is at its best." It paid off! By the time we met, she had already survived this year’s challenging graduate admissions cycle, received four offers, and decided to attend Duke University for her doctoral studies.

 

The most impressive part is that she is doing all of this while competing as a Division I athlete on Tulane's swimming team.

 

On top of all her classes and research, Olcaytu is a student-athlete on the swimming team. Practice, travel, social life, and national competitions. All stacked on top of coursework, lab hours, and thesis writing. Some days, Olcaytu shared that after finishing training and classes, she comes home exhausted and cannot do anything else. "It is hard to balance at first, and I have to learn to say 'no' even though I don't want to.” There are social plans that get cancelled, and college evenings disappear. There are stretches where the only thing between her and burnout is routine. But Olcaytu does not frame being an athlete as a sacrifice, but instead, it was a structure, a “cherry on top” of her life as a researcher and a student. "Swimming teaches me skills that turn out to be extremely useful for research: resilience, discipline, and time management." The most important of these, she admitted, is consistency. It taught her that showing up every day, putting in a little effort, and not waiting for motivation to arrive will help her make progress and one day reach her dream. Being on a swim team also balances her life out. "When I don't do research, I get to swim with my friends. When I'm already physically tired, I come back and work." Olcaytu shared with a smile.

 

Olcaytu Hatipoglu is a senior pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering with a minor in Electrical Engineering at Tulane University. She is a First-year Honor Scholar, a student-athlete on the Tulane swimming team, and a Peer Tutor providing academic support in STEM subjects, including Calculus, Chemistry, Physics, and BME courses.