BIOGRAPHY

I am an Assistant Professor of Engineering Management and Technology at the University of Tennessee at Chatanooga. I have been teaching Data Analytics, Engineering Economy, Innovation and Leadership courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. My research interest includes Data Mining, Business Analytics (Analyzing consumer-related data to identify behavioral patterns and traits), Statistical Decision Making, Health Informatics (Analyzing healthcare data to generate useful insights), Neuroeconomics, Knowledge Management, Student Retention & Graduation Analytics fields. However, over the last several years I have carried out more research in the areas of information quality and predictive-statistical analytics. I serve as the faculty advisor for the American Society for Engineering Management (ASEM) student chapter

Prior to my role at UTC, as a business analyst at Ford Motor Company (Detroit, Michigan), I was involved in building a “in house made“ Spark-based Data Profiling tool that identifies the concepts (including PII concepts), scans the landed data in Hadoop environment, and provide columnar analysis to assess the quality of information. Our teamwork was nominated by Chief Data and Analytics Offices for the “Henry Ford Technical Award” which was presented at the annual Henry Ford Award Conference on June 16, 2017. The exclusive data profiling tool was a result of extensive research and experimentation.

During my time (as an Assistant Professor at Engineering Management Department) at Southeast Missouri State University, I was awarded a competitive DENSO grant which is one of the largest global automotive suppliers of advanced technology, systems and components. In this project, a framework for enhancing data quality and detecting the deceptive/duplicate records in the automotive sector was proposed. The proposed framework promised greater data processing and analysis capability, which improves the quality of the data linkage process.

Latest Publications

1) Varol,S., Catma, S., Reindl, D., Serieux, E. (2021). “Primary factors influencing the decision to vaccinate against COVID-19 in the United States: A predictive analytics approach”, submitted to International Journal of Infectious Diseases

2) Messiha, M., Fox, L., Varol, S., Aldhuwayhi, B., Kaplanoglu, E., (2021). “Traffic Accidents Cuase and Effect Analysis: A Case Study in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Submitted to 2nd International Informatics and Software Engineering Conference, December 17, 2021

3) AlAmin, M., Varol, S, Mowrer, A., Tong, J., Catma, S. (2021). “Analyzing Factors Associated with Fatality Rate of Road Collisions: A Case Study in Tennessee”, In proceedings at the American Society for Engineering Management 2021 International Annual Conference and 42^nd Annual Meeting, October 27, 2021

4) Varol, S., Catma, S. (2021). "Assessing the impact of a distance based Spatial Factor on Retention", Education Sciences. Volume 11, Issue 9. 508

5) Catma, S., Varol, S. (2021). “Exploring the Spatial Dimensions of College Retention within the Context of Inequality", International Journal of Education Economics and Development (accepted-in print)

6) ·O’ Dougherty P., Ferrel, K., Varol, S. (2021). “A Study of Semiconductor Defects within Automotive Manufacturing using Predictive Analytics” In proceedings at the 9^th International Symposium on Digital Forensic and Security, June 30-July 1, 2021

7) ·Catma, S., Varol, S. (2021). “Willingness to Pay for a Hypothetical COVID-19 Vaccine in the United States: A Contingent Valuation Approach”. Vaccines Journal. Volume 9, Issue 4. 384

8) Varol, S. (2020). “Intensification of Personally Identifiable Information”, presented at the 2020 IISE Annual Conference, October 12, 2020

9) Abdulrahman, A., Varol, S. (2020). “A Review of Image Segmentation Using Matlab Environment”, in proceedings at the 8^th International Symposium on Digital Forensic and Security, June 1-June 2, 2020

10) Varol, S., Marquez, A. (2020). “An Empirical Study on Assessing Brand Loyalty in Automobile Industry using Hidden Markov Model” is published by Academy of Marketing Studies Journal, Volume 24, Issue 1, pp. 1-13

Student - Faculty Research Opportunities

Class-based research projects, capstone experiences, and out-of-class student/faculty collaborative research (like summer research experiences) have a major role in my research.

If you are interested in doing student-faculty driven projects, please contact me at serkan-varol@utc.edu or fill in the form below.