3 MS & PhD Alumni

Ece Nur Balık (IE) works as a Business and Data Analyst at KoçZer, one of the Koç Group Companies. Ece Nur completed her undergraduate and graduate studies at Özyeğin University Department of Industrial Engineering with a high honor degree. She worked voluntarily for Kahve Dünyası and Fiba Commercial Properties companies with the non-credit summer internship programs offered by our university, during her undergraduate education. She was selected for the international internship program organized by our university for successful students and had the opportunity to see business life in a different culture at Anchor Group in Romania. Ece Nur completed her internships which gave her a variety of professional perspectives, at Adel Kalemcilik and DHL Supply Chain companies on creating value and ensuring efficiency in business processes in supply chain.

Ece Nur, who studied in Finland for 4 months with the Erasmus Student Exchange Program, being one of the students representing our university in the Joost Peters Student Business Challenge held in the Netherlands the next year, developed projects with students from different cultures during her undergraduate period.

In the master's program which she started after her undergraduate education, she worked on the "Open-End Bin Packing Problem with Conflicts", a new topic in the combinatorial optimization literature and adapted various algorithms to this problem, developed a metaheuristic algorithm that would perform better than these algorithms under the leadership of her thesis advisor Prof. Dr. Ali Ekici. She presented her work at the ISCO2022 (International Symposium on Combinatorial Optimization) conference.

Sena Artarslan (MSc. IE) works as an analytical consultant under the Supply Chain Directorate at KoçDigital. She provides consultancy services by blending her knowledge in both machine learning and optimization to develop algorithms used in clients' supply chains and integrating them into their processes effectively.

With the contribution of the elective courses she took as a senior at Özyeğin University, she developed a simulation model to test the efficiency of being an agile team at RDC Partner as an internship. In her senior year, she contributed to the predictive quality project that predicts defects in glass production with machine learning. After completing her undergraduate studies, she pursued a master's degree in Industrial Engineering at Özyeğin University, where she also served as a research and teaching assistant. During her graduate studies, she worked as a teaching assistant in the Mathematical Modeling and Exact Methods course. Meanwhile, she conducted research on a version of the Inventory Routing Problem under the scope of TÜBİTAK 1001 and successfully completed her thesis on the same topic. She had the opportunity to present her thesis project at the POMS Conference in France.

After completing her master's degree as of September 2023, Sena continues her career journey in business life and provides consultancy to Turkey's leading companies at KoçDigital by developing solutions that optimize supply chain problems.

Birce received her bachelor’s degree from the Department of Industrial Engineering at Ozyegin University. During her undergraduate education, she developed an interest in supply chain management and acquired skills in the field through relevant coursework. She participated in Unilever’s Supply Chain Reaction Project in her senior year, gaining valuable experience that allowed her to bridge the gap between theory and practice. She also took on roles in extracurricular activities throughout bachelor’s, such as serving as a peer advisor in OZU Peer Advisor Program and being a member of student clubs.

She pursued her education by commencing a master’s program within the same department, where she focused her research on humanitarian logistics and disaster management with the motivation of making contributions to society. She enhanced her proficiency in applying advanced analytical methods and Operations Research techniques to support decision-making in the related fields. Additionally, she served as a teaching assistant during her master’s studies, which further honed her academic and professional skills.

She is currently in her third year as a Ph.D. student at HEC Montréal, specializing in the Department of Logistics and Operations Management. Her doctoral thesis focuses on humanitarian supply chain network design and management. She has received prestigious awards and scholarships in recognition of her academic achievements during her doctoral studies, including Merit Scholarship Program for Foreign Students (PBEEE), Foundation J. Armand Bombardier Scholarship, and CIRRELT Doctoral Excellence Scholarship.