3 BS Alumni

Farzad completed his doctoral studies in Industrial Engineering at Özyeğin University, where he achieved academic success and actively participated in various research projects. His research thesis focused on optimization under uncertainty and was accompanied by simultaneous involvement in multiple research endeavors. He successfully defended his thesis in February 2023 and was distinguished as the outstanding researcher at the engineering faculty of Özyeğin University during the final year of his Ph.D. studies. He also collaborated with scholars from Binghamton University to solve the electric bus scheduling challenge of the university's shuttle network. Additionally, Farzad served as a teaching assistant for various courses, particularly for heuristic algorithms for optimization courses.

Currently, Farzad continues his post-doctoral studies at HEC Montréal, where he concentrates on tackling inventory routing and distribution problems for Hydro Quebec, Canada's largest power utility and a significant global hydropower provider. Simultaneously, he remains committed to advancing projects in transportation optimization and optimization under uncertainty, particularly emphasizing public transportation. Farzad actively engages as a member of esteemed research institutes in the logistics field, including Cirrelt and GERAD.

Ecem (IE) earned her undergraduate degree in Industrial Engineering with a minor in Computer Science at Özyeğin University. Throughout her undergraduate studies, she served as a teaching assistant in various courses, enhancing her academic knowledge, and took on roles in numerous events. She also gained business experience through internships at companies such as Marks&Spencer, Credit Europe Bank Romania, Bosch, and Kariyer.net. She participated in innovative idea development workshops held in Turkey and the Netherlands.

Ecem also completed her master's degree at Özyeğin University, where she made significant contributions to international and interdisciplinary research projects. She had the opportunity to present her research at international conferences and took part in organizing committees. She continued her role as a teaching assistant in various courses. Due to her outstanding performance, she was awarded the Best Teaching Assistant in 2022 and the Outstanding Research Assistant in 2023. Additionally, her undergraduate and graduate studies were supported by scholarships from the Istanbul Chamber of Industry Foundation and TÜBİTAK BIDEB.

Ecem is currently pursuing her PhD in Technology and Operations Management at INSEAD, one of the world's top business schools. She is focusing on areas such as humanitarian logistics, sustainable operations, and healthcare systems, expanding her interests and continuing her research in these fields.

Berk Buzcu (CS), graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Özyeğin University in 2020. During his undergraduate years, he had his internship at KoçSistem, where he served as a System Engineer Intern. During his senior year, he worked as a Cloud Consultant in a start-up venture, focusing on cloud systems architecture and also delving into automated negotiation, even participating in the ANAC 2020 competition.

Subsequently, Berk pursued further academic pursuits, enrolling as a Master's Student at Özyeğin University. During this academic journey, he actively contributed to the CHIST-ERA project, "EXPECTATION: Personalized Explainable AI for decentralized agents with heterogeneous knowledge," funded by Tübitak. Within this project, his primary research focus was on the application of explainability techniques in recommender systems, which aligned perfectly with his research interests. The overarching goal was to enhance the effectiveness of recommender systems in helping users achieve their objectives while fostering sociability.

In addition to his thesis research, Berk took on the development of a human-robot negotiation environment and explored other multi-agent-related topics involving Blockchain and drone cooperation. His dedication and contributions led to the publication of five papers during his master's program. Currently, Berk has started working as a Research Assistant at HES-SO, Switzerland on the "Smart-Edge" project where he is working on a healthcare use case for edge computing.