Pinar Keskinocak

Pinar Keskinocak is the H. Milton and Carolyn J. Stewart School Chair and Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, a leading program within the Engineering faculty. She earned her Ph.D. in Operations Research and M.S. in Industrial Administration from Carnegie Mellon University, along with M.S. and B.S. degrees in Industrial Engineering from Bilkent University. Before joining Georgia Tech in 1999 as Assistant Professor, she was a postdoctoral fellow at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. Her career at Georgia Tech includes progression to Associate Professor (2005), full Professor with endowed chairs such as Joseph C. Mello Professor (2011-2014) and William W. George Chair Professor (2014-2024), ADVANCE Professor in the College of Engineering (2014-2020), Interim Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Scholarship (2017-2018), and Associate Chair for Faculty Development in ISyE (2023-2024). She co-founded and directs the Center for Health and Humanitarian Systems (CHHS), an interdisciplinary research center focused on education, outreach, and projects since 2007.

Dr. Keskinocak's research applies operations research and management science to areas with societal impact, including health systems, humanitarian systems, supply chain management, and logistics/transportation. Key efforts encompass infectious disease modeling for COVID-19, polio, malaria, and Guinea worm disease; intervention strategy evaluation and resource allocation; vaccination catch-up scheduling; hospital operations management; and disaster preparedness such as inventory prepositioning and debris management. Collaborations involve the CDC, American Red Cross, CARE, Carter Center, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, and Emory University. Selected publications include “Proactive Tethering to Prevent Guinea Worm Infections among Dogs in Chad: An Analysis of the Impacts of Timing and Dog Selection” (American Journal of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene, 2025), “Modeling the spread of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 outbreaks and interventions: A case study of Nigeria” (Vaccine X, 2024), “Predicting a Kidney Transplant Patient’s Pretransplant Functional Status Based on Information at Waitlist Registration” (Scientific Reports, 2023), “Heterogeneous Multi-Resource Planning and Allocation under Stochastic Demand” (INFORMS Journal on Computing, 2023), and “The impact of social distancing on COVID19 spread: State of Georgia case study” (PLoS One, 2020). Awards include INFORMS Fellow (2015), IISE Fellow, INFORMS President’s Award, George E. Kimball Medal, Harold Larnder Prize, Women in Operations Research and Management Science Award, NSF CAREER Award (2001), Georgia Tech Class of 1934 Outstanding Service Award, Outstanding Achievement in Research Program Development, and Outstanding Professional Education Award (2018). She served as INFORMS President (2020), department editor for Operations Research, and on National Academies committees for supply chain resilience and vaccine distribution.