I am an associate professor in the Operations Research and Industrial Engineering Graduate Program in the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.
My current research interests focus on integrated humanitarian logistics and disaster resilience decision making, particularly hurricane and other extreme weather event mitigation, preparedness and recovery decision making and optimization. My main effort here is to combine predictive science-based models with prescriptive stochastic optimization models to develop an end-to-end understanding of uncertainty and optimized decision making in humanitarian logistics and disaster resilience, particularly for critical infrastructure and communities. My students have been working on such comprehensive modeling of several high-stakes societal problems:
- Large-scale hospital and nursing home evacuation before hurricanes
- Short-term mitigation and protection of power grids before heavy rainfall events including hurricanes
- Mid-term mitigation of power grids against floods and winter storms
- Long-term climate adaptation of power grids against extreme weather, including heat waves and more intense, more frequent storms
- Equitable, community-sensitive resilience investment decision making for critical infrastructure including power grids
My resilience work is complemented by my on-going research interests on manufacturing and service logistics with focus on planning and scheduling, network design, inventory, and transportation.
If you want to learn more about my work and research interests, visit my research page.
I teach courses in the areas of operations research, production planning and inventory control, logistics, and scheduling. For more on my teaching interests and course home pages, go on to my teaching page.
A rather long CV with latest info including publications and links is available here.
ACADEMIC POSITIONS
- Associate Professor (September 2008 – Present, on leave September 2013 – August 2015)
Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin - Assistant Professor (September 2002 – August 2008)
Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin - Assistant Professor (August 1999 – August 2002)
Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
- Consultant for Caterpillar (January 2012)
Provide modeling, optimization and engineering support for the engine assembly plant inbound transportation logistics. - Consultant for Freescale Semiconductor (NXP) (July 2006 – November 2008)
Provide modeling, optimization and engineering support for the Industrial Engineering and Computer Integrated Manufacturing teams, focusing on batching and scheduling optimization. - Consultant for IBM (August 1999 – August 2002)
Provide engineering and development support for Service Parts SolutionsGroup, PSS/Global Services Division of IBM. Develop OR models for supply chain optimization. - Consultant for Tyson Foods (Fall 2000 – August 2002)
Developed a 2-day short course on Forecasting. Have been training the planners and forecasting personnel at Tyson Foods as a part of a 3-person team. - OR Analyst and Strategy Development Engineer (February 1999 – August 1999)
Service Parts Solutions, PSS / Global Services Division, IBM, Mechanicsburg, PA Assisted in developing a strategic decision support tool based on an OR model for the multi-echelon network design, inventory stocking and distribution decisions. Developed scalable techniques for large-scale OR models for network design and inventory stocking problems, and implemented the first-phase of a long-term restructuring project.
EDUCATION
- Ph.D., Industrial Engineering, 1999.
Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA- Concentration: Operations research, manufacturing logistics and scheduling, mathematical programming, distributed algorithms.
- Dissertation: “Distributed Resource Scheduling: Optimization Models, Equilibrium Conditions, and Incentive Compatible Mechanisms” (Advisor: Prof. S. David Wu)
- M.S., Industrial Engineering, 1995
Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey- Thesis: “Job Shop Scheduling under Dynamic and Stochastic Manufacturing Environments” (Advisor: Prof. Ihsan Sabuncuoglu).
- B.S., Industrial Engineering, 1992
Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey
RESEARCH INTERESTS
- Humanitarian Logistics, Disaster Resilience, Extreme Event Mitigation, Preparedness, Response and Recovery Optimization
- Manufacturing, Service and Maintenance Operations and Logistics
- Supply Chain, Transportation, and Inventory Management
- Integer Programming and Large-Scale Optimization
- Airline Operations, Service Parts Logistics, Semiconductor Manufacturing
AWARDS
- IBM Faculty Award, 2019.
- NSF CAREER Award, 2002-2007, NSF.
- Summer Research Award, 2004, The University of Texas at Austin.
- Selected to the INFORMS Young Researcher Roundtable, 2005.
- Graduate Scholarship, 1995-1999, Department of ISE, Lehigh University.
- Graduate Fellowship, 1992-1995, Department of Industrial Engineering, Bilkent University.
- Undergraduate Fellowship, 1987-1992, Department of Industrial Engineering, Bilkent University.