CURRENT MEMBERS
BAHAR YETİŞ KARA
Founder of HELP
Bahar Yetis Kara is a Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering at Bilkent University where she has been a faculty member since 2001. Dr. Kara holds an M.S. and Ph.D. degree from Bilkent University Industrial Engineering Department, and she worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at McGill University in Canada.
Dr Kara’s current research interests include distribution logistics, humanitarian logistics, hub location and hub network design. Dr. Kara is one of the founders and a member of the executive board of the EURO Working Group on Humanitarian Operations (HOpe). She is also a member of the executive board of Bilkent University and of Turkish OR Society. Dr. Kara editored 4 books and authored/co-authored more than 90 journal and conference papers.
Dr. Kara holds “Best Dissertation Award” given by INFORMS-UPS-SOLA (2001), TUBA-GEBIP (National Young Researchers Career Development Grant) reward (2008), IAP Young Researchers Award (2009), and TÜBİTAK Young Scientist Incentive Award (2010). She is currently co-Editor-in-Chief of Transportation Research- Part B, and working as an associate editor of IIE Transactions, Operations Research, Data Analytics and Logistics, and Socio Economic Planning and Science.
EGEHAN UĞRAŞ
Research Area: Handling Volunteer Convergence in Post Disaster Search and Rescue Operations
MELEK TUNCEL
Research Area: Modelling Earthquake Migration through Bi-Level Optimization
ZEHRANAZ DÖNMEZ VAROL
Zehranaz Dönmez Varol received her Ph.D. in 2024 from Bilkent University, Department of Industrial Engineering, where her research focused on the fair allocation of in-kind donations in post-disaster response. She subsequently completed a postdoctoral project at the Professorship of Business Analytics & Intelligent Systems at the Technical University of Munich. Her research addresses logistics challenges in uncertain environments, with a particular emphasis on humanitarian and healthcare applications. She is a recipient of the EURO WISDOM YoungWomen4OR Award (2024) and has been supported by multiple research fellowships from TÜBİTAK, including doctoral and international postdoctoral scholarships.
ALUMNI
ALKIM ABANUZ
Alkım Abanuz received her B.Sc. in 2026 from Bilkent University, Department of Industrial Engineering. Her research interests center on the fair allocation and selective routing of one-time demand distribution.
ÇAĞLA FATMA DURSUNOĞLU
Çağla Fatma Dursunoğlu received her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Industrial Engineering from Bilkent University. Her research interests include selective routing problems, humanitarian logistics, and optimization. She has published in leading journals such as European Journal of Operational Research and Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies. She was a visiting researcher at HEC Montréal from September 2024 to November 2024.
Thesis Title: Selective Routing Problems in Humanitarian Operations
EFECAN ŞENTÜRK
Efecan Şentürk received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Industrial Engineering from Bilkent University in 2023 and 2025 respectively. He is currently a Ph.D. student in Management Science & Engineering at University of Waterloo. His research interests include humanitarian logistics and transportation systems optimization.
SELİN DOĞAN
Research Area: A General Mathematical Framework for Emergency Medical Services