Department of Industrial Engineering undergraduate students Kaan Yavuz, Beril Burçak, Hakan Şentürk, Ayça Karatepe, Osman Karaaslan and Alaz Şenol have been selected as finalists for the 2015 INFORMS Undergraduate Operations Research Prize for their IE 477- 478 System Design project, "Integrated optimization of aircraft utilization and on-time performance", conducted under the supervision of Dr. Kemal Göler in collaboration with Pegasus Airlines Network Planning Department. The students presented their work at the 2015 INFORMS Annual Meeting held between November 1-4 in Philadelphia in the US. The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) is the largest professional society in the world for individuals in the field of operations research, management science and analytics. The Undergraduate Operations Research Prize Competition is held each year to honor a student or group of students who conducted a significant applied project in operations research or management science and/or original, important theoretical or applied research in operations research or management science while enrolled as an undergraduate. The submissions vary from single-authored theoretical research papers to applied projects conducted by student teams. The overwhelming majority of submitted papers have been of exceptional quality, with a few being published in highly- regarded academic journals. The team were also selected as the winner in the 13th Bilkent University Industrial Engineering Senior Design Project Contest and Fair held in May with their same project being the first and only design project conducted with Pegasus Airlines.
