Nilsu Uzunlar

PhD Candidate in Operations Management, Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University

Welcome! I am currently a PhD candidate in Operations Management at the Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University. I am fortunate to be advised by Professor Alan Scheller-Wolf. Prior to joining Tepper, I received my MSc degree in Industrial Engineering from Bilkent University, where I was advised by Professor Emre Nadar.

My research lies in the domain of sustainability, focusing on how policy can effectively balance economic feasibility with environmental progress. I take a problem-driven approach: I start with real-world sustainability challenges faced by firms and policymakers, and then choose the right analytical tool (optimization, game theory, information theory) to study them. A key goal of my work is to understand how policies can foster sustainable business models while accounting for the interactions among firms, policymakers, and investors.

Published Journal Articles

Diffusion control in closed-loop supply chains: Successive product generations with Busra Bayrak, Busra Guray, and Emre Nadar (2024). International Journal of Production Economics, Vol 268.

Work in Progress

Greenness and its Discontents: Operational Implications of Investor Pressure with Alan Scheller-Wolf and Sridhar Tayur (2024). Major Revision, Management Science.

Finalist, POMS College of Sustainable Operations Best Student Paper Competition. 2024.

Subsidizing Circularity to Support the Domestic Renewable Energy Industry with Alan Scheller-Wolf and Siddharth Prakash Singh (2025).

Diffusion Control in the Renewable Energy Transition: Scarcity, Replacements, and Circularity with Emre Nadar and Atalay Atasu (2025).

Teaching

Instructor

Guest Lecturer for Foundations of Operations Management (PhD). Fall 2025.
Guest Lecturer for Optimization for Business (Undergrad Core). Fall 2024.
Operations Management (Undergrad Core). Summer 2024.

Teaching assistant

Sustainable Operations (Undergrad Elective and MBA Elective). Spring 2023, Spring 2024, Fall 2024.
Six Sigma Tools and Techniques (MBA Elective). Fall 2023, Spring 2025.
Optimization for Business (Undergrad Core and MBA Core). Spring 2023, Spring 2024, Fall 2024, Spring 2025, Fall 2025.

Service

Session Chair for the Energy and Natural Resource Management track for the POMS Conference. 2025.
President for the CMU INFORMS Student Chapter. 2023-2024.
Chair of the Organizing Committee for the YinzOR Student Conference. 2023.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse