Academic Directors

Dr. İsmail Arı, who is currently Özyeğin University’s Director of Knowledge, Technology Transfer and Entrepreneurship, served as the Vice President of TÜBİTAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) and Deputy General Manager of Teknopark Istanbul between 2013-2018. Before these roles, he worked as an Assistant Professor at Özyeğin University in Computer Science Department and a senior researcher at Hewlett Packard Labs in Silicon Valley/USA (2004-2009). He received his PhD degree in 2004 from University of California Santa Cruz, Computer Science Department. His research areas include big data, cloud computing, and networked storage systems. He has international publications and US patents related to these topics. After joining Özyeğin University in 2009 he has received several awards and research grants including IBM Top Faculty Contributor Award, EU Marie Curie IRG (International Reintegration Grant), TÜBİTAK National Young Researcher Career Award, and Rector’s Merit Award. Dr. Arı, has also been involved as a lead investigator, consultant and referee in a large numbers of industrial projects within the scope of University Industry Cooperation. Dr. Ari is a member of IEEE, ACM and a founding member of the IBM Cloud Academy.

Burcu Balçık received her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering (IE) from the University of Washington in 2008, and B.S. and M.S. degrees from Middle East Technical University’s IE Department in 2001 and 2003, respectively. She was a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University (2008-2009), a visiting researcher at the HumLog Institute (2009), and a visiting professor at HEC Montreal (2017-2018).

Dr. Balçık’s main research interests are in the areas of humanitarian logistics and disaster management. She focuses on improving the performance of organizations and systems that focus on social good by using operations research methods. She has collaborated with various non-governmental organizations in her projects. Her work has appeared in prestigious journals such as Production and Operations Management, Transportation Science, IISE Transactions.

Dr. Balçık is an Associate Editor of Transportation Science. She is also on the Editorial Boards of Production and Operations Management, Transportation Research Part E, Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Sustainability Analytics and Modeling, and Journal of Business Logistics. Dr. Balçık has taken several leading roles at professional societies including the INFORMS Public Sector Operations Research (PSOR) and the EURO Working Group on Humanitarian Operations (EURO-HOpe). She is a recipient of the Young Scientist Award from the Turkish Science Academy (BAGEP 2014).

Dr. Balçık joined Özyeğin University's IE Department as an Assistant Professor in 2011. She was promoted to Associate Professor in 2015 and Professor in 2022. She has been serving as the Academic Director of the Sustainability Platform since July 2022.

M. Pinar Mengüç, after graduating from Ankara Science High School, received his BS and MS degrees from ODTU/METU in Ankara, Turkey, and his PhD from Purdue University, USA in 1985. He joined to the University of Kentucky and promoted to the ranks of associate professor and professor in 1988 and 1993, respectively, and eventually selected as the Engineering Alumni Association Chair Professor in 2008. He was a visiting professor at Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Italy during 1991 and at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, during 1998-99 academic year.

He joined Özyeğin University, Istanbul in 2009 as the founding Head of Mechanical Engineering. The same year, he established the Centre for Energy, Environment and Economy (CEEE/EÇEM). Mengüç’s research areas include radiative transfer, nanoscale transport phenomena, applied optics and sustainable energy applications. His research programs have been funded by more than 60 grants from several agencies in the US, in Europe and in Turkey, with more than 10 million USD funding in Kentucky and the additional 3 million Euro in Turkey. Over the years, he has guided more than 70 MS and PhD students, and post-docs researchers. He is the author/co-author of more than 150 archival papers, 220 conference publications, four books, and several book chapters. He holds six patents, including a triadic patent. He is one of the three Editors-in Chief of Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer (JQSRT) (since 2006) and an Editor of Physics Open (since 2019). He is a fellow of both ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineering) and ICHMT (International Center for Heat and Mass Transfer), and a Senior Member of OSA (Optical Society of America).

Mengüç, with his start-up company STI, was honored with a R&D100 Award in 2005 based on a particle characterization technique they developed. He received 2014 Knowledge Transfer Award and 2015 Outstanding Researcher Award, both from Ozyegin University. In 2018 he received the ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award in the category of Art, and in 2020 he was chosen as an Outstanding Mechanical Engineer by the Purdue University School of Mechanical Engineering. He received two major national awards with the CEEE researchers; the team was chosen for the first place in Efficiency Awards category by the Turkish Ministry of Industry and Technology (2019), and the first place for the Energy Efficiency Awards category presented jointly by Istanbul Chamber of Commerce and the Turkish Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources (2020). Mengüç is an elected member of Science Academy of Turkey and currently serving in its executive board.