In 2010, a team led by Uygun in the Center for Engineering in Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital developed a technique that someday may allow growth of transplantable replacement livers.
[8] Uygun highlighted the significance of his work by saying, "As far as we know, a transplantable liver graft has never been constructed in a laboratory setting before".
[9] A novel technique was also used to "reintroduce hepatocytes, the cells that carry out most of the liver’’s primary functions, into the decellularized matrix".
[4] In 2009, Uygun was awarded by the National Science Foundation for a research project, "Liver Reengineering".
Uygun is also a Co-investigator and collaborator on several projects with Martin Yarmush and Mehmet Toner Uygun is married to Başak E. Saygılı, who is also a medical researcher and faculty at Harvard Medical School and Center for Engineering in Medicine; the couple has a daughter called Elif Naz.