Erhan Kutanoglu completed his BS and MS degrees in Industrial Engineering at Bilkent University in 1992 and 1995, respectively. He received his PhD in Industrial Engineering from Lehigh University in 1999. His dissertation work focused on distributed algorithms and auction-based mechanisms, their connection to centralized optimization, and their applications to production scheduling. After his doctoral work, he joined Product Support Services group within IBM Global Services as an operations research analyst. As part of a modeling and engineering team, he helped build IBM's after-sales product support logistics infrastructure and service parts inventory in 1999. Then, he started as Assistant Professor in the Industrial Engineering Department at the University of Arkansas and continued to serve as a consultant to IBM the next three years. He joined the Operations Research and Industrial Engineering (ORIE) group within the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Texas at Austin in 2002. In the same year, he received the CAREER award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Given to very few in each field, this award is among the most prestigious offered to junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research and excellent education. Prof. Kutanoglu received his tenure and was promoted to Associate Professorship in 2008 at UT Austin. In 2010, he visited Sabanci University for a semester through TUBITAK’s Visiting Scientist Scholarship Program. He joined the Abdullah Gul University in 2013 as full professor to lead the Industrial Engineering Department and to help in the university’s start-up. He currently serves as one of the Vice-Rectors.
Focusing on applied operations research as a research and teaching interest, Prof. Kutanoglu collaborated with many companies, directed many large-scale projects, advised masters and doctoral students, taught undergraduate and graduate courses in optimization, production planning and scheduling, logistics modeling and supply chain management, and actively participated in professional societies (particularly INFORMS and IIE) with leadership roles and organized tracks and sessions in flagship conferences in his field. Along with his work at IBM, he has directed joint projects with AMD, Freescale Semiconductor, Tyson Foods, Caterpillar and Samsung. His research interests span supply chain management and logistics, transportation, network design, production planning and scheduling, mathematical programming and optimization, and their applications in semiconductor manufacturing systems and in after-sales product support, service and spare parts systems. More recently, he has focused on optimization of parts procurement and delivery systems for large engine assembly lines and on integration of maintenance and repair activities with spare parts procurement, especially when applied to large machinery, medical equipment and oil rigs.