3 BS Alumni

Dr. Birgül Cansu Acartürk  (CE) completed her undergraduate degree in civil engineering in 2017, finishing as the second in her department. Throughout her university years, she served as both a research and teaching assistant, honing her academic skills. Her undergraduate studies, particularly focusing on sustainable and innovative building material systems, influenced her decision to pursue doctoral education in these areas. She successfully completed her doctoral studies at The Ohio State University in 2022 with a thesis titled "Novel and Sustainable Cementitious Systems: Improving Calcium Sulfoaluminate Cement and Bacterial Concrete Properties."

During her doctoral period, Dr. Acartürk published numerous academic articles on sustainable cement-based systems and bacterial concrete. She also presented her research at national and international conferences. Currently, Dr. Acartürk continues her career as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder, where her research is concentrated on bio-based cementitious systems. Her work aims to develop innovative approaches to reduce carbon dioxide emissions during cement production and usage.

Cem Anıl Arslan (IE) is a Data Science Expert at McKinsey & Company management consulting firm. In his role, he is managing analytics studies in the energy sector. He combines his analytical expertise in machine learning and optimization techniques with energy sector knowledge to increase the profitability of the plants while also reducing their environmental carbon footprint. 

Cem holds bachelors from Ozyegin University with a major in Industrial Engineering and a minor in Computer Science. He graduated from Ozyegin University in 2017 as the valedictorian of his class. Following 2 years of experience in the industry, he persuaded a Master's in Artificial Intelligence from KU Leuven from which he graduated with a magna cum laude degree.

Cem joined the Management Consulting firm McKinsey & Company as a data scientist in 2017. Since then, his focus was in energy sector projects in different countries including Turkey, Thailand, Malaysia and Azerbaijan. Currently, he is the most firm-tenured Data Scientist in the Istanbul Office.

In his projects in the energy sector, Cem uses different machine learning techniques to model complex chemical reactions and utilizes various optimization algorithms to increase profitability via dynamically optimizing process parameters. In a typical study, 3+ years of data from 2000+ different sensors are utilized to understand these complex relationships. As a consultant, Cem's responsibilities also involve developing the right software infrastructure that will enable deployment of the analytical models, design and development of dynamic dashboards to show the results to plant engineers and operators and ensuring the adoption of new tools that come with digital transformation to ensure that analytical solutions generate real impact.

Projects in which Cem was involved enabled analytical-driven profitability increase between 2-7% and reduced the carbon footprint of the plants enabling more efficient operations with reduced energy and feedstock consumption. 2 of the analytical projects in which Cem was lead data scientist was selected as digital lighthouse projects (across the globe) by the World Economy Forum.

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.