Hikmet earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Türkiye and his Ph.D. from the Illinois Institute of Technology through a highly competitive Ministry of National Education Fellowship, ranking second nationwide. His training includes postdoctoral research at Ben-Gurion University and a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship at Harvard-MIT. He later founded and chaired the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at İnönü University, where he is a Professor. A pioneer in Vitreoscilla hemoglobin (VHb) research, Hikmet studies microbial genetic engineering for therapeutic and biotechnological applications. He is currently a TÜBİTAK-supported Visiting Professor in the Demirer Lab at Caltech, developing bacterial systems for DNA-free CRISPR-Cas RNP delivery to plants.