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Burcu Balçık is a faculty member in the Department of Industrial Engineering (IE) Department at Özyeğin University (OzU), where she also serves as the Academic Director of the OzU Sustainability Platform.
She earned her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Washington, with M.S. and B.S. degrees from Middle East Technical University, IE Department. She held a postdoctoral research position at Northwestern University (2008-2009) and was a visiting researcher at the HUMLOG Institute (2009), HEC Montreal (2017-2018), Zero Hunger Lab at Tilburg University (2024-2025).
Her research primarily focuses on humanitarian supply chains and disaster management, where she develops data-driven analytical approaches—such as optimization, mathematical modeling, simulation, and heuristics—to improve decision-making for better disaster preparedness and response. She also works in the intersection of crises (i.e., climate-driven events, pandemics) and health and agri-food systems. She is interested in applications of analytics for social good. She actively collaborates with governmental and nongovernmental organizations on various projects.
Her research has been published in leading journals and has received prestigious awards, including the Production and Operations Management Society prize and the SEIO-BBVA Foundation award. Among her honors are the Young Scientist Award from the Turkish Science Academy (2014), Luk Van Wassenhove Career Award from EURO-HOpe (2023), and American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN)’s research and academic contribution award (2025).
Dr. Balçık is an Associate Editor for Transportation Science and IISE Transactions and serves on the editorial boards of several journals, including Production and Operations Management, Transportation Research Part E, Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Sustainability Analytics and Modeling, and Journal of Business Logistics.
She has played leadership roles in professional societies such as INFORMS Public Sector Operations Research (PSOR) and the EURO Working Group on Humanitarian Operations (EURO-HOpe). She has delivered keynote addresses at prestigious conferences, including EURO 2022, ICCL 2022, EURO-HOpe 2024, and EWGLA 2025.
Dr. Balçık is a member of Science Academy of Turkey. She serves on the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality’s Earthquake Science Council Logistics working group. She is also a member of UNHRD Stock Taskforce.
Google Scholar profile: link
ORCID-ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3575-1846
Contact:
Industrial Engineering Department
Nişantepe Mah. Orman Sok. No: 34-36
Cekmekoy, 34794 Istanbul, Turkey
E-mail: burcu.balcik(at)ozyegin.edu.tr
Phone: + 90 (216) 564 9390