3 BS Alumni

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.

Alara Baransel (CS 2020), completed an internship at Oracle Turkey. During her internship, she honed her skills in cloud technologies, containerization, and virtualization. In the final years of her bachelor's degree, she engaged in academic research on smart load testing methods alongside Assist. Prof. Dr. İsmail Arı, resulting in the publication of her first international conference paper in 2021.

After graduating, Alara began her professional career as an Application Developer at IBM Turkey. Over the course of 2.5 years at IBM Turkey, she worked in various roles. Currently, Alara works as a Solutions Architect at AWS (Amazon Web Services) in London.

Mert Kavala graduated from Kabataş Erkek Lisesi and started his undergraduate studies in the Civil Engineering program at Özyeğin University with a full scholarship. Throughout his four years at the Özyeğin University, he had the opportunity to enhance both socially and academically. He served on the executive board for 3.5 years and was president of the OzU Construction Club in 2021. In his undergraduate studies, Mert served as an undergraduate teaching assistant for Static and Construction Management courses.

Additionally, he took on the role of undergraduate research assistant in the field of self-healing concrete materials at Assoc. Prof. Zeynep Başaran Bundur’s Advanced Concrete Materials laboratory. In 2022, Mert graduated from Özyeğin University with a GPA of 3.71, ranking first in the department. He expanded his graduation project in collaboration with project members under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Feyza Çinicioğlu and Assoc. Prof. Zeynep Başaran Bundur and presented it in the 18th Young Geotechnical Engineers Symposium. Their paper titled ‘Microbially Induced Carbonate Precipitation (MICP) Use for Slope Stabilization in Sands and Clays’ was selected as the best paper.

In January 2023, he started the combined Ph.D. program in Geotechnical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. As a graduate research assistant, he is currently researching bio-catalyzed CO2 sequestration technologies. Furthermore, he has been working as a graduate teaching assistant for the Introduction to Geotechnical Engineering course for the past two semesters. He received the Larry Goertz Graduate Fellowship from the Cockrell School of Engineering for 2022-2023 in recognition of his academic achievements.