Mumtaz Karatas holds a BSc in Industrial Engineering from the Turkish Naval Academy and an MSc in Industrial & Operations Engineering from the University of Michigan. He has six years of experience as an operations research analyst for the navy and obtained his PhD in Industrial Engineering from Kocaeli University. Following his time as a researcher at the Naval Postgraduate School for two years, he served as a faculty member at the Turkish Naval Academy for 10 years.

His primary research focuses on the application of operations research techniques, optimization, machine learning, and data analytics to tackle supply chain design and logistics problems, as well as defense planning problems. He specializes in areas such as facility location and sizing, vehicle/inventory routing, sensor network design, and transportation planning. His recent research includes robust optimization in the context of disaster planning, healthcare resource management, and UAV mission planning.

Dr. Karatas has published over 60 peer-reviewed journal articles and presented his work at more than 30 renowned international conferences. His research has appeared in major journals including European Journal of Operational Research, Computers & Operations Research, Omega, Annals of Operations Research, Applied Soft Computing Journal, Expert Systems with Applications, Computers and Industrial Engineering, Journal of the Operational Research Society, Naval Research Logistics, Applied Energy, and Computer Networks.

Dr. Karatas is on the editorial boards of academic journals including Applied Soft Computing Journal, Journal of Business Analytics, International Journal of Applied Management Science, and Journal of Naval Science and Engineering. He also acted as a guest editor for various other journals, such as Expert Systems, Micromachines, Drones, Frontiers in Public Health, Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience. Additionally, he is the co-editor of the book “Operations Research for Military Organizations”.

For three consecutive years, Dr. Karatas has been recognized in the Stanford University/Elsevier Top 2% Scientists List, achieving a ranking of #369 out of 29,481 authors in the field of “Operations Research” for 2024, placing him in the top 1.2%.