Merva Soluk Tekkesin has been an Associate Professor of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology at Istanbul University's Institute of Oncology since 2015. She completed her dental school training in 2003, and her residency in oral and maxillofacial pathology, as well as her PhD, was completed in tumour pathology at Istanbul University in 2010. She was an overseas training fellow at King’s College London, Guy’s Hospital and the Department of Head & Neck / Oral Pathology and was the first Tier 5 International Training Fellow to complete training in the UK in 2010. She served as European Councillor of IAOP between 2014-2020 and has been assigned as the first digital communication officer of the same organization until 2024. Her main interests are odontogenic lesions, fibro-osseous lesions, oral cancer, oral potentially malignant disorders, digital pathology and AI. She is one of the co-authors of the WHO Classification of Head and Neck Tumors books. She was awarded the 2019 Turkish Academy of Science Outstanding Young Scientist Award in the field of medical sciences.