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.