SENIOR RESEARCHERS

Dr. Merih Angın is an Assistant Professor at Koç University's College of Administrative Sciences and Economics, where she lectures at the International Relations Department, and Computational Social Sciences graduate program. Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs of Harvard University, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government of the University of Oxford, and a visiting scholar at the Mortara Center for International Studies of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Dr. Angın holds a Ph.D. degree in International Relations/Political Science from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID), an M.Sc. degree in International Relations from METU, and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Bilkent University. Her research interests lie in the areas of International political economy, international development, international financial institutions, investment arbitration, computational social science including agent-based modeling, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI) governance. Her research on AI usage in social sciences has been awarded the EU's Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellowship, as well as the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey’s International Fellowship for Outstanding Researchers.

Dr. Pelin Angın is an Assistant Professor of Computer Engineering at Middle East Technical University (METU). She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Purdue University and a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Bilkent University. Between 2014-2016, she worked as a Visiting Assistant Professor and Postdoctoral Researcher at Purdue. Her research interests lie in the fields of cloud computing and Internet of things (IoT) security, distributed systems, 5G networks, blockchain and machine learning. She is among the founding members of the Systems Security Research Laboratory and an affiliate of the Wireless Systems, Networks and Cybersecurity Laboratory at METU. She serves on the editorial boards of multiple journals on IoT and mobile computing. Her work in security has been published at high impact journals including IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, Computers & Security and IEEE Access among others.  

Dr. Hakan Emekçi holds a Ph.D. degree in Economics from Hacettepe University, a Master’s in Finance degree from London Business School (LBS), and a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from Middle East Technical University (METU).  Dr. Emekci has worked for the Turkish Treasury for ten years. During this period, he prepared Medium Term Economic Plans of Turkey for periods 2012-2015 with Macro-Economic Modeling Team and negotiated macroeconomic framework with IMF in the context of Article IV consultations. He represented Turkey in several international organizations including G20, EU, Responsible Finance Forum.

He is co-author of the book “Data Analysis with R” written in Turkish and gave “Data Mining with R” lectures to Auditors at Ankara Social Sciences University. His research interests lie in the areas of macro-economic modeling, machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), and Natural Language Processing (NLP).

Daniele Aglio is a Ph.D. student at the Economics Department of Koç University. He holds an M.Sc. degree in Economics from Bocconi University and Université catholique de Louvain. His research interests lie in the areas of Applied Macroeconomics and Labour Economics, and his doctoral research focuses on monetary policy and heterogeneity of firms, with theoretical extensions of New Keynesian models.  During his academic studies, he worked as an intern at the OECD and as a research consultant at the European Central Bank. He currently manages a study centre on economic and social issues in his hometown in Italy.

Gülce Elif Atabey is a Master’s student at the International Relations Department of the Koç University. She holds a High Honor Bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Bilkent University. She was an exchange student at the Pontificia Comillas University of Madrid. She had a number of internship experiences in state institutions such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey as well as academic institutions such as CFPPR. She was an executive member of the Bilkent International Relations and EU Politics Society (BIEST) during her undergraduate studies. Her research interests lie in the areas of international political economy with a particular focus on the political economy of development, emerging and rising powers.

Mustafa Yahşi is a Ph.D. student at the Economics Department of Koç University. He holds an M.Sc. degree in Economics and Management of Science from Humboldt University of Berlin and a B.Sc. degree in Industrial Engineering from Boğaziçi University. His research areas are Experimental Economics, Behavioral Economics and Machine Learning.

Beyza is a senior undergraduate student at the Economics Department of Koç University. She is doing a double major in Business Administration and a minor in International Relations. She has been working with Assistant Professor Sevcan Yesiltas as a research assistant about public sentiment analysis by collecting data from Twitter. Also, she has been learning Python since last year. She believes that Social Sciences and Computational Sciences should be combined. Her research interests include Political Economy, Behavioral Economics, Big Data, Economic Growth and Development. 

Hasan Kocabaş is a sophomore undergraduate student at the International Relations Department of Koç University. He is doing a double major in Economics at the same time. His research interests are macroeconomics, political economy, international institutes and diplomacy. 

Anıl is a senior undergraduate student at the Economics Department of Koç University. He is doing a double major in Business Administration and a minor in International Relations and MAVA. He has been working with Assistant Professor Sevcan Yesiltas as a research assistant about public sentiment analysis by collecting data from Twitter. He has been learning Python since last year. He believes that different perspectives of these disciplines will positively affect academic studies. His research interests include Political Economy, Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Behavioral Economics.

Aybike Şahinoğlu is a senior Sociology major at Middle East Technical University minoring in Psychology. She holds a multidisciplinary perspective that applies statistical and programming tools within the analysis of the social world and behaviour. She is in the process of  developing skills in Python and R. Her main research interests currently involve Social Inequalities, Political Ecology & Economy, Work, and Welfare.

Betül Dayan is a business administration student, with a minor in psychology, at Koç University. Her research interests are consumer behavior, management, international marketing, and international political economy.