ACADEMIC POSITIONS

• Assistant Professor (August 2002 - Present)
  Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Texas, Austin, TX
  • As a tenure-track faculty member in the Operations Research and Industrial Engineering Graduate Program, develop and teach courses, develop research program, advise students, and serve on departmental and university committees
    
    
• Assistant Professor (August 1999 - August 2002)
  Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR
  

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

• Consultant for IBM (August 1999 – August 2002)
  Provide engineering and development support for Service Parts SolutionsGroup, PSS/Global Services Division of IBM. Develop OR models for supply chain optimization.
  
  
• Short Course on Introduction to Supply Chain Optimization (May 2002)
  Developed a 1-day short course on supply chain optimization with a partner for attendees of the Center for Engineering Logistics and Distribution (CELDi) Spring Meeting in Fayetteville, AR. The attendees included upper-level managers and planners from transportation and manufacturing companies.
  
  
• Consultant for Tyson Foods (Fall 2000 – August 2002)
  Developed a 2-day short course on Forecasting. Have been training the planners and forecasting personnel at Tyson Foods as a part of a 3-person team.
  
  
• OR Analyst and Strategy Development Engineer (February 1999 – August 1999)
  Service Parts Solutions, PSS / Global Services Division, IBM, Mechanicsburg, PA Assisted in developing a strategic decision support tool based on an OR model for the multi-echelon network design, inventory stocking and distribution decisions. Developed scalable techniques for large-scale OR models for network design and inventory stocking problems, and implemented the first-phase of a long-term restructuring project.
  
  
• Summer Intern (Summer 1990, Summer 1991)
  Meteksan AS (a leading company in paper and pulp industry in Turkey), Ankara, Turkey
  Yapi Kredi AS (a leading bank in Turkey), Ankara, Turkey
  Tofas AS (the biggest auto manufacturer in Turkey), Bursa, Turkey

EDUCATION

• Ph.D., Industrial Engineering (February 1999)
  Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA
  
  • Concentration: Operations research, manufacturing logistics and scheduling, resource allocation, mathematical programming, distributed algorithms.
  • Dissertation: "Distributed Resource Scheduling: Optimization Models, Equilibrium Conditions, and Incentive Compatible Mechanisms" (Advisor: Prof. S. DavidWu)
    
    
• M.S., Industrial Engineering (January 1995)
  Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey
  
  • Thesis: "Job Shop Scheduling under Dynamic and Stochastic Manufacturing Environment" - Investigation of uncertain events on manufacturing system performance (Advisor: Prof. Ihsan Sabuncuoglu).
    
    
• B.S., Industrial Engineering (June 1992)
  Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey

RESEARCH INTERESTS

• Models and Algorithms for Distributed Decision Making
• Manufacturing and Service Logistics and Supply Chain Management
• Integer Programming and Large-Scale Industrial Optimization
• Game Theoretic Models for Combinatorial Optimization
• Service Parts Logistics
• Semiconductor Manufacturing

AWARDS

• NSF CAREER Award, 2002-2007, NSF.
• Summer Research Award, 2004, The University of Texas at Austin.
• Selected to the INFORMS Young Researcher Roundtable, 2005.
• Graduate Scholarship, 1995-1999, Department of IMSE, Lehigh University.
• Graduate Fellowship, 1992-1995, Department of Industrial Engineering, Bilkent University.
• Undergraduate Fellowship, 1987-1992, Department of Industrial Engineering, Bilkent University.

I am an assistant professor in the Operations Research and Industrial Engineering Graduate Program at the University of Texas at Austin. The program is an "area" under the Department of Mechanical Engineering. I have received my Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Lehigh University (Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering), Bethlehem, PA, last millennium (1999). Before joining the faculty here, I taught in the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Arkansas, Fayettevile, Arkansas. I worked at IBM Global Services in Mechanicsburg, PA, and I obtained my Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA.

My research interests include design and implementation of distributed and market-based decision mechanisms including e-commerce and auctions, large-scale optimization, game theoretic models, robust optimization, model pre-processing for efficient algorithm design. Applications include manufacturing and transportation logistics, supply chain management, logistics network design, inventory management, resource allocation and scheduling. If you want to learn more about my work and research interests, visit my research page.

I teach courses in the areas of operations research, production planning and control, logistics, and statistics. For more on my teaching interests and course home pages, go on to my teaching page.

erhank@mail.utexas.edu