KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Prof. Dr. Emel Aktaş has B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in industrial engineering from Istanbul Technical University, Turkey. She began her career at Istanbul Technical University as a research and teaching assistant. She worked as a visiting researcher at Wayne State University, USA and as a lecturer at Dogus University, Istanbul, Turkey during her PhD studies.

She took part as a researcher in public and private funded projects on location selection, shift scheduling and transportation master plan strategy. Her refereed articles have appeared in a variety of journals including European Journal of Operational Research, Interfaces, Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, Socio-Economic Planning Sciences and Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice. Before joining Cranfield, Emel was the course director of MSc Global Supply Chain Management programme at Brunel University Business School.

Dr. Selma Öner graduated from Istanbul Technical University, Department of Industrial Engineering in 1995 and received her Master’s degree and Ph.D. from Boğaziçi University, Department of Industrial Engineering. She completed the General Management program at Harvard Business School in 2014. Dr. Öner started her professional career as a Research Assistant at Boğaziçi University and then joined Şişecam in 1997. She worked as Logistics Engineer at Paşabahçe Cam San. ve Tic. A.Ş. and later served in various managerial positions there before becoming Supply Chain Director at Trakya Cam San. A.Ş. In 2017, Dr. Selma Öner was appointed Group Procurement Coordinator at Türkiye Şişe ve Cam Fabrikaları A.Ş. In January 2018, she became the Chief Procurement Officer of Şişecam. Since July 2021 she is appointed to Chief Supply Chain Officer.

Dr. İsmail Karakış received his Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering from Istanbul Technical University in 2004, his Master’s degree in Engineering Management in 2007, and his Ph.D. in 2014 from the same institution. For over 20 years, he has worked as a management consultant across various industries, providing strategic, operational, and technological consultancy services in areas such as Procurement and Supply Management, Inventory and Warehouse Management, Supply Chain Management, and Logistics Management to numerous national and international organizations. During this time, he has led numerous operations strategy, business model design, and process and technology transformation projects in more than 25 countries, including overseas. He has also participated in many national and international congresses and events as a presenter of academic papers and as a panelist on topics related to procurement management.

Having more than 25 years of professional experience, Burak has been working on supply chain transformations both professionally and academically. He has worked for Beko, Oracle, Ernst & Young and has managed or been member of more than 50 transformation projects.  Specializing on the Multi-echelon Inventory Optimisation and Dynamic Simulation, he has been lecturing production and operations management for 13 years as adjunct professor and is also author of two books – “The Bullwhip Effect in Supply Chains” and “Supply Chains That Changed History”.