Our Industrial Engineering Team Once Again Selected As the Only Finalist Team from Turkey for INFORMS Operations Research & Analytics Student Team Competition

Our Industrial Engineering team ranked among the top 8 teams out of 200 teams from the world’sleading universities during the annual INFORMS Operations Research & Analytics Student Competition, which was held the second time. Thus, just like last year, our team once again was selected as the only finalist team from Turkey to attend the INFORMS Analytics Conference. 

Our team prepared for the competition under the mentorship of Prof. Ekrem Duman, Dr. Enis Kayış, and Dr. Zehra Melis Teksan from our Faculty of Engineering. The team was invited to the finals which will take place as part of the INFORMS Analytics Conference organized by INFORMS in Baltimore, Maryland from April 15 to 17. The student team competition is the largest competition organized for students by INFORMS, one of the leading organizations in Industrial Engineering and Business Management. The top eight finalists of this largest student competition are as follows in alphabetical order:

• University of Belgrade, Serbia
• University of Bern, Switzerland
• Hankuk University of Foreign Studies[a1], South Korea
• The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
• The University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, USA
• University of Los Andes, Colombia
• Özyeğin University, Turkey
• Queen’s University, Canada

Although the competition was also open for graduate students, the Özyeğin University team is made up of only undergraduate students, just like last year.

Volkan Selim Cantürk – (Industrial Engineering, Senior Student, Minor in Hotel Management) 
Mustafa Çamlıca –(Industrial Engineering, Senior Student)
Zeynel Batuhan Organ –(Industrial Engineering, Senior Student, Minor in Computer Science) 
Çelen Naz Ötken – (Industrial Engineering, Senior Student) 
Elif Ceren Yıldırım – (Industrial Engineering, Senior Student)

INFORMS, the leading international association for professionals in operations research and analytics, introduced this new competition to highlight young talent, and provide O.R. and analytics students the opportunity to solve the real-world workplace challenges they will face during their careers. The winners will be announced during the INFORMS Analytics Conference on April 17.

About the INFORMS Operations Research & Analytics Student Team Competition:

The student teams were given the same business problem, data sets, and access to software to solve a challenging problem using an O.R. and analytics approach. A panel of industry and academic experts evaluated written submissions to select the finalists based on each teams’ use of the full analytics process, from framing the problem to methodology selection, data use, model building, and quantitative analysis. For more information about the INFORMS Operations Research & Analytics Student Team Competition: http://connect.informs.org/oratc/home

About INFORMS:

With more than 12,500 members from around the globe, INFORMS is the leading international association for professionals in operations research and analytics. INFORMS promotes best practices and advances in operations research, management science, and analytics to improve operational processes, decision-making, and outcomes through an array of highly-cited publications, conferences, competitions, networking communities, and professional development services. For more, please visit www.informs.org or @informs.