Ph.D. in Decision Sciences and Engineering Systems · Best Thesis Award
"Probabilistic Inductive Learning: Induction of Rules with Reliability Measures for Decision Support"
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY (1994)
M.S. in Industrial and Management Engineering
“The Use of Exploratory Data Analysis to Develop Decision Rules for Claims at a Workers’ Compensation Board”
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY (1990)
B.S. in Industrial Engineering
Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey (1989)
Deutsche Schule Istanbul (Alman Lisesi), (1985)
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Academic Experience
Koç University, College of Administrative Sciences and Economics (2004 – present)
Assistant Professor
YÖK Doçent (2006)
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Decision Sciences and Engineering Systems (1989 - 1994)
Research and Teaching Assistant, and Instructor
ZS Associates, Evanston, IL (1998 – 2004)
Management consulting firm with over 600 employees worldwide, specializing in sales and marketing. Most clients are Fortune 100 companies in health care, particularly pharmaceuticals.
Manager
Lead research and development, tool construction, benchmark and training development, pilot projects and commercialization for sales response modeling tailored to direct promotion management for US pharmaceuticals. Manage ZS sales response product, an integral part of company's largest practice (sales force size and structure).
Governed innovation and analytics for the annual sales force strategy US-based large pharmaceutical company, including size, structure, deployment, targeting and compensation for over 5,000 sales reps promoting more than 15 products across multiple therapeutic areas and generating $8 billion in US sales.
Optimized promotional investments within and across channels such as sales forces, professional meetings, samples, e-details, direct to consumer advertising and managed care programs for various pharmaceutical clients.
Introduced analytical methods and processes to coordinate managed market and sales force investments of several hundred million dollars.
Evaluated market value, business environment, competitive landscape and key success factors of Turkish oncology market for expansion of the oncology portfolio of a large multinational client.
Led sales and marketing strategy consulting engagements with clients from various industries.
Identified key drivers of sales force effectiveness and outlined improvements for an automotive client. Devised field- and tele-sales strategy for medical device company.
GE Research and Development, Niskayuna, NY (1994 – 1998)
Management Scientist, Information Technology Lab
Focused on quality (Six Sigma) and data mining, innovated and identified and ran R&D projects with GE businesses including Plastics, Medical Systems, NBC and Capital.
Trained and evaluated GE Plastics Black Belts for company's Six Sigma program.
Received two US patents for inventions in the quality area.
Identified drivers of warranty to service contract conversion. Defined a benchmark product based on mining the remote service logs at Medical Systems.
Analyzed TV viewers' response to advertisements in order to maximize return on ad time at NBC.
Established a demand forecasting and staff scheduling system for GE Capital Retail Financial Services.
Received the Chris Voss Highly Commended Award at the EurOMA 2007 Conference for the paper Profit Maximizing Pharmacy Decision and Pharmacy Discounts in Turkey with my student Burak Çavdaroğlu
Received Doçent title from Türkish higher education council (YÖK) - 2007
GE R&D Whitney Award for Guiding GE Plastics Six Sigma Initiative
Ruth and Dale Karger Best Thesis Award for Ph.D.
Rensselaer Research and Teaching Assistantship for M.S. and Ph.D.
Turk Egitim Vakfi Scholarship for Graduate Studies
Vehbi Koc Vakfi Scholarship for 8th Place in University Entrance Examination
