Banu Iyisan is an associate professor at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Boğaziçi University. She is the founder of Biofunctional Nanomaterials Design (BIND) Lab and her multidisciplinary research interests include the design, fabrication and characterization of smart nanocarrier systems to overcome challenges in biomedical research and healthcare applications. 

She was nominated and awarded as the head of the Max Planck Partner Group in 2023, and her group at Boğaziçi University became a partner group of Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research. In 2025, she was also honored with the L’Oréal-UNESCO Türkiye "For Women in Science" Award for her project titled "A Novel Therapeutic Approach with Smart Nanomedicines for Aggressive Triple-Negative Breast Cancer." She has received several research grants, including Tübitak 2247D National Outstanding/Early Stage Researchers Program and Tübitak-DAAD Bilateral Cooperation Program. 

She studied Chemical Engineering at Istanbul Technical University (BSc 2009, MSc 2011) and worked as a research and teaching assistant before moving to Germany in 2012 for her PhD at the Leibniz Institute for Polymer Research. She received her PhD in Chemistry from Technical University of Dresden in 2016, where her research focused on polymer-based nanocarriers for biomedical applications. During her PhD, she was also a member of the Helmholtz IHRS NANONET research school in nanoelectronics. She then worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (2017–2020), developing functional nanocarriers for biosensing and drug delivery applications within an EU-funded breast cancer diagnostics project.