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.

Gizem (ME) works as a project coordinator at GÜNSEL EV, the domestic electric vehicle company of Northern Cyprus. Gizem completed her undergraduate and graduate degrees at Özyeğin University's mechanical engineering department, believing in the importance of a multidisciplinary approach and living in all areas of life. She took active roles in many national and international organizations during both education periods and returned to her country with various awards in the competitions she participated in.

Gizem, who is an ENKA sports club licensed athlete, continued her professional swimming life at her club and university throughout her undergraduate education and took an active role in all inter-university competitions representing Özyeğin University. She founded Özyeğin University's swimming team with her friend Cansu Buket Tokat and achieved many successes in individual and team competitions in Özyeğin's first gold trophy swimming team. At the same time, she worked as a swimming coach during her undergraduate and graduate education and she trained young athletes.

In 2016, Gizem started her master's education under the supervision of Prof. M. Pınar Mengüç. She was selected for the final held in Paris among 19.722 teams from all around the world in the international "Go Green in the City Competition", which she participated with Ebru Tatar in her first year, and was awarded with the "Women in Business Award". At the same time, she worked as a teaching assistant during her graduate education and conducted the chemistry laboratory courses she was assigned to.

In 2018, in the Samsung Bosphorus Intercontinental Swimming Race, which was chosen as the World's Best Open Water Swimming Organization, in which a total of 2400 athletes from 52 countries participated, she won the Silver medal. What makes this race special for her is the successful donation campaign she organized as a TEV volunteer within the scope of the “TEV- Educated Girls, Hopeful Futures” project. In the same year, she won the gold medal in the Çanakkale Boğazı race. She participated in the project management trainings organized by various academies in 2022 and passed the IPMA exam and was awarded the "IPMA Level C: Certified Project Manager" certificate. She has been working as a project coordinator at GÜNSEL EV since the summer of 2020 and has been giving Tango dance training to many employees voluntarily in the dance club she founded in 2022.

Tolga Aydın (CE) successfully completed his civil engineering undergraduate studies, along with an electrical and electronic engineering minor program graduating with a GPA of 3.47 in 2022, ranking second among his peers. During his undergraduate studies, he volunteered as a teaching assistant for MATH 104, MATH 212, and MATH 211 courses.

On the academic front, he participated as an undergraduate scholarship holder in the TÜBİTAK project titled "Production of Prototypes by Additive Manufacturing Method Using Fiber-Reinforced Geopolymer Mortars (GEO-3B)" under the supervision of Assoc. Prof. Dr. Zeynep Başaran Bundur. The outcomes of the final project, conducted with his team, were presented in a paper titled "Utilization of Microbially Induced Calcite Precipitation (MICP) for Soil Improvement" at the 2^nd National Symposium of Young Geotechnical Engineers, hosted by the Department of Civil Engineering, Geotechnical Division, Erciyes University, on September 28, 2022, and recognized as the 'best paper' by the Board of Directors.

He is currently pursuing his master's degree at Özyeğin University. In the first year of his master's program, he worked on the TÜBİTAK project titled "Production of Fiber-Reinforced Cement-Based Composites with 3D Printers". His current research focuses on the design of a fiber-reinforced single-piece geopolymer mortar suitable for 3D printer technology, utilizing waste stone wool.