Committees
Professor
Dr. Kürsat Yelken
Professor
Dr. Sevtap Akbulut
Professor
Dr. Hakan Birkent
Professor
Dr. Dirk Mürbe
Professor
Dr. Reinaldo Yazaki
Professor
Dr. Mark Courey
Professor Dr. Kursat Yelken is a Professor of Otolaryngology, Head&Neck Surgery and a Fellow of the European Board of Otolaryngology, Head&Neck Surgery. After graduating from Ankara University, Faculty of Medicine, he became Otolaryngologist with a thesis entitled ''a comparison of voices of singing students studying in different music types, by means of acoustic analysis'' in 2005. He was awarded with a scholarship from The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey and served as a fellow at Harvard Medical School, MEEI Department of Laryngology between 2008-2009.
Prof. Dr. Kursat Yelken is the former president of Turkish Voice Speech and Swallowing Society and former president of VoiceIstanbul Congress. He published over 50 articles in international and national journals; continually gives lectures and makes presentations in international and national conferences. He is the founder of Voicest Clinic in Istanbul and continues to serve in this clinic since 2016.
Professor Dr. Sevtap Akbulut is a dedicated otolaryngologist, subspecializing in laryngology and phoniatry. Her special interests include voice disorders, professional and singing voice care, gender-affirming voice surgeries, dysphagia and associated swallowing disorders, neurolaryngology and laryngeal EMG.
She graduated from Hacettepe University School of Medicine in Ankara in 1995. She completed her residency at the Department of Otolaryngology and Head & Neck Surgery in Istanbul in 2002.
She is the National Coordinator of the Union of European Phoniatricians. She is the former president of the Speech Language and Swallowing Disorders Society in Turkey and congress president of the VoiceIstanbul 2025. She has authored many articles for peer reviewed journals. She lectures nationally and internationally in conferences, also participates in workshops and hands-on courses as instructor for education of laryngologists and speech language therapists.
Professor Dr. Hakan Birkent is a graduate of Gulhane Military Medical School, Ankara, Turkey. He completed his residency programme at the Otorhinolaryngology&Head and Neck Surgery Department of Gulhane Military Medical Academy in 2002, and has trained in laryngology at the Otolaryngology Department of University of Washington in Seattle,WA,USA between 2007-2008. He had the degree of Associate Professor in 2010, and Full Professor in 2019. He is now seeing his patients at Liv Hospital in Istanbul/Turkey.
Dr. Birkent is well-known by his works on voice disorders, and gender-affirming voice surgeries. He had recently described a new surgical technique for voice feminization which is called as “Tensioning Glottoplasty”. He has participated in many otolaryngologic events as speaker and/or moderator all over the world. Dr.Birkent has over 60 papers published and indexed in the medical literature. He is the President of Voice, Speech and Swallowing Association in Turkiye. He is a founding member of the International Association of Trans Voice Surgeons, and member of the European Laryngological Society, and the Union of the Europian Phoniatricians.
Professor Dr. Dirk Mürbe is Professor and Head of the Department of Audiology and Phoniatrics at the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin. His main focus is highly specialized Phonomicrosurgery and Laryngeal framework surgery. Further, he is specialized in the voice care of professional singers and actors being himself a graduate of the University of Music Dresden with an artistic diploma. He holds leadership positions in numerous highly recognised medical societies, including currently as Past-President of the German Society of Phoniatrics and Pediatric Audiology, Vice-President of the Union of the European Phoniatricians, and Secretary General of the Pan-European Voice Conferences. He is one of the Founding members of IATVS. For many years he has been working as Head of the Voice Research Laboratory at the University of Music Dresden and Lecturer at the University Mozarteum Salzburg.
Professor Dr. Reinaldo Yazaki
General Otorhinolaryngologist, Laryngologist and Phoniatrician, Phonosurgeon
Formerly mentored and oriented by Dr Paulo Pontes in Federal University of São Paulo
Director-CEO of the Artistic Voice Institute- Brazil
Professor and Lecturer of International Congresses since 2,008
Specialist in Artistic and Professional Voice with 6,400+ in followup, in 20+ years of private practice
Active member of UEP and COMET
Dr. Mark Courey
Professor, Chief of Laryngology, Director of the Grabscheid Voice and Swallowing Center of Mount Sinai, Director of Mount Sinai Fellowships in Laryngology
As the first otolaryngologist in the United States to complete formal fellowship training in laryngology, Dr. Courey has focused his practice on the management of patients with voice and swallowing difficulties. Dr. Courey is a pioneer in the interdisciplinary approach for patients and is recognized nationally and internationally for his leadership in the subspecialty. He works directly with patients, speech-language pathologist, voice scientists, and other physicians to find the best solutions for his patients’ problems. Dr. Courey has been instrumental in training more than 50 national and international laryngologists. Throughout his career, Dr. Courey has cared for classically trained and commercial vocal performers. He has extensive experience in voice science and the requirements of vocal performance professional and performance voice users. At the Belmont School of Music, Dr. Courey studied voice and taught Anatomy and Physiology of Voice to vocal performance majors and graduate students in vocal pedagogy. While at Vanderbilt, he directed the Vanderbilt Voice Center, worked with vocal performers of all genres, and served as the physician to the Nashville Opera. In San Francisco, he developed the UCSF Voice and Swallowing Center and was a physician for SF Opera. Dr. Courey has pioneered and promoted modern techniques of endoscopic laryngeal microsurgery and has developed novel laryngeal sparing techniques for patients with laryngeal chondrosarcoma. More recently, Dr.Courey has worked to advance voice care for transgender people. Based on physiological principles and surgical skills, Dr. Courey has demonstrated that pitch elevation surgeries, when combined with voice therapy, produce reliable outcomes and improve patient satisfaction in aligning voice with gender more rapidly and with greater stamina than previous approaches. Dr. Courey continues to promote the interdisciplinary team approach for patients in an effort to help patients avoid surgery whenever possible.
