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 nternational 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. Özge Karanfİl is an Assistant Professor at the Business Administration Department of Koç University. She holds a B.Sc. and an M.Sc. degree in Industrial Engineering from Bogazici University, an M.Sc. in Physiology from McGill University, and a Ph.D. degree from MIT Sloan School of Management. With a background in industrial engineering, management, and health sciences, she is drawn to systemic problems of chronic nature, which encompass typical constraints and approaches with important managerial implications for the societal domain, coming from medical or non-medical contexts. Her training is multi-disciplinary; she has both collaborated and published with experts in management, systems sciences, health sciences, and engineering to solve complex managerial problems with important policy implications for the societal domain. One of Dr. Karanfil's main lines of research is the investigation of the universal problem of evidence-based development of sound and reliable clinical practice guidelines (CPGs). The theory and resulting models she builds are grounded in empirical evidence-base and use a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods and dataÖ

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).

Dr. Gökhan Ş. Güneş is a Research Assistant Professor at Bahcesehir University Center for Economic and Social Research (BETAM). He holds a Ph.D degree in Economics from Koç University. His research areas include monetary policy applications, their impacts on financial markets, and sentiment analysis. 

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.

Sinan Akgünay is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Political Science and Public Administration Department of Middle East Technical University. He holds an M.Sc. degree in Financial Engineering from Boğazici University and Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Bilkent University. His research interests lie in international political economy and public policy with specific focus on global finance policy, regulatory governance and, institutional and policy change. His current research topics include the global governance of multilateral lending and the multidimensional impacts of China’s global finance policy. Akgunay has a 7-year professional experience in the financial sector as a banker and consultant. He is the Co-Founder of ‘Mesele Ekonomi’, a research-based economics oriented online media platform and of XYZ Interactive, a public policy oriented digital communications company.

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.

Ayça Deniz is a PhD candidate in Computer Engineering at Middle East Technical University. She received her M.Sc. degree at the same department in 2016, and B.S. degree in Computer Engineering at TOBB University of Economics and Technology in 2012. Her research interests include machine learning, evolutionary algorithms, and natural language processing. During her academic studies, she worked as a software engineer in the IT sector for more than four years.

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.

Emre is a senior undergrad at Koç Univeristy studying economics as his major and international relations as a minor. He believes that economics and politics should be considered together and he is doing a track program in international political economy. His research interests are political economy, economic development and inequalit

Deniz Aycan is a senior undergraduate student at the International Relations Department of Koç University. She is doing a double major in Economics and a minor in Sociology at the same university. She has been working with Prof. Ziya Öniş on the subjects of the political economy of right-wing populism and protests. Her research interests include Public Policy, International Political Economy, Socioeconomic Development, Sustainability, and Environmental Governance. She started to develop her computational skills by learning Python to use in NLP research. She is also a fellow at Global Learning and Leadership Program for Sustainability and had internship experience in the sustainability consultancy field.

Berk Emre Çelik is a senior undergraduate student at Koç University. His majors are International Relations and Economics. He has been working with Professor Ziya Öniş as a research assistant on the subjects of political economy of right wing populism and Turkish foreign policy. Also, he has been serving as a student tutor for the courses microeconomics and macroeconomics at the Koç University Office of Learning and Teaching. His research areas are International Political Economy, International Macroeconomics, Economic Growth and Development.

Ali İhsan is a junior undergraduate student at Koç University's Economics Department and he is doing a double major in Sociology. He is planning to do track programs in Competition and Strategy & Migration Studies. He previously worked as a Lab&Field Assistant at Kaymakçı Archeology Project. He has been learning Python in recent months. He truly believes in interdisciplinary work. His research interests include International Political Economy, Economic History and Migration Studies.

Görkem Köroğlu is senior undergraduate student at the Economics Department of Koç University. He is doing a double major in international relations. His concentrations are global economics, macroeconomics, and financial economics. He is also interested in the economics of data.

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.

Cem Eryar is a junior undergraduate student at the Economics Department of Koç University. He is doing a double major in Sociology and a track program of International Political Economics. He is interested in Behavioral Economics and Political Economy. 

Ayşegül Elbaşı is a senior undergraduate student at the Economics Department of Koç University. She is doing a track program in Philosophy, Politics and Economy and she is the vice president of the FranKu student club at the university. She studied one semester at Sciences-Po for her Erasmus program. She is a volunteer of EFE Academy, which is a project about inequalities of opportunity in education and  University of Oxford Covid-19 Government Response Tracker as a data contributor. She has also experienced internships in sales and marketing areas. She also continues  CFI’s Commercial Banking & Credit Analyst (CBCA)™ Certification Program.

Alper Tanrıverdi is a junior Political Science and Public Administration student at Middle East Technical University.  He is also an Economics minor program student at the same university. He is one of the alumni of Data Science for the Public Good Program, founded by the University of Virginia and coordinated by TED University Center for Applied Data Science. His research interests are International Political Economy, Labor Market, and Migration.

Lyn El Hajjar is a third-year International Relations Undergraduate student undergoing a track in Mediterranean Studies at Koç University. She has a strong interest in the Black sea region and middle eastern domestic and foreign policy (with a concentration in the Levant). She is interested in Middle Eastern Geopolitics and cybersecurity, and the socio-economic politics of the Gulf and Levant.