3 BS Alumni

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.

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.

Hakkı (EE) received his undergraduate degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Özyeğin University. He has been a Tubitak researcher during his undergraduate studies, working on projects focusing on computer vision and object detection technologies. He was a member of the winner team in a competition called “Youth is designing the future” which was organized by Arçelik. He is now a PhD student at University of Rochester in Computer Sciences. Hakkı is planning to keep working in problem solving and research areas both in academy and private sector.