Özgür Araz is the Ron and Carol Cope Professor and Professor of Supply Chain Management and Analytics. His research interests are systems simulation, business analytics, healthcare operations and public health informatics. His research had been supported by NIH, Veterans Engineering Resource Center (VERC), HDR company, Boys Town of Nebraska, Nebraska Medicine and the University of Nebraska. Before joining the College of Business at UNL, he served as a faculty member of the College of Public Health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC). He received his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Arizona State University and was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics of The University of Texas at Austin.
Dr Araz’s published research appeared in peer review journals including IISE Transactions, Production and Operations Management, Decision Sciences, INFORMS Journal on Computing, Annals of Operations Research, Decision Support Systems, International Journal of Production Economics, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, in addition to high impact medical and health care journals such as American Journal of Public Health, Emerging Infectious Diseases, Obesity, Medical Care, American Journal of Emergency Medicine, among many others. He is a member of INFORMS, POMS (Production and Operations Management Society), Decision Sciences Institute, System Dynamics Society and HIMSS (Healthcare Information Management Systems Society). He currently serves on the Editorial Review Board of Production and Operations Management and IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management journals, and as an editorial advisory board member of the Transportation Research Part -E journal. He is also an associate editor for IISE Transactions on Healthcare Systems Engineering journal and the Public Health Informatics Area Editor for the Health Systems journal. Professor Araz served as an associate editor for Decision Sciences (Jan 2020- March 2023). Dr Araz was a faculty fellow of Nebraska Governance and Technology Center and currently is a faculty fellow for the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute.
PhD Students
- Ahmet Cinar, Dissertation: “Prioritized routing and scheduling for home healthcare services: static and dynamic optimization” (Committee member) 2019, Industrial Engineering, Koc University- Chair Sibel Salman.
- He Zhu, PhD Dissertation: “Systems approach to traffic fatalities” (Committee Member) 2016 (graduated- Postdoctoral fellow at School of Medicine, Duke University), Health Services and Administration, College of Public Health, UNMC- Chair Fernando Wilson.
- Moosa Tatar, Dissertation: “Association between prescription drug monitoring program and overdose incidence or abuse in the US” (Committee member 2020, Postdoc at Cleveland Clinic), Health Services Research and Administration, College of Public Health, UNMC- Chair Fernando Wilson.
Masters Students Completed
- Mert Parcaoglu, Thesis: “Routing and scheduling for home healthcare services with cooperating multiple service providers” (Committee member) 2022, Industrial Engineering, Koc University- Chair Sibel Salman.
- Zijian Qin, Capstone: “Readmission modeling for sepsis patients” (Member), 2016, Master of Public Health (MPH) in Epidemiology, College of Public Health, University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC)- Chair Lorena Baccaglini.
- Ben Whittsitt, Capstone: “Predictors of sepsis and natural history modeling” (Member), 2016, Master of Public Health (MPH) in Biostatistics, College of Public Health, UNMC- Chair Gleb Haynatzki.
- Brock Hanisch, Capstone: “Modeling chlamydia transmission dynamics between jails and the community” (Chair), 2014 (Public Health Analyst in Douglas County Health Department), Master of Public Health, College of Public Health, UNMC.
- Jagar Jasem, Capstone: “An epidemiological analysis of the acute flaccid paralysis surveillance and poliomyelitis infection in Iraq, 1997-2011” (Member), 2014, Master of Public Health in Epidemiology, College of Public Health, UNMC.
EDITORIAL SERVICE IN JOURNALS
- Production and Operations Management, Editorial Review Board
- Transportation Research Part–E, Editorial Advisory Board Member
- IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Editorial Review Board
- IISE Transactions on Healthcare Systems Engineering, Associate Editor
- Health Systems, Public Health Area Editor
- Decision Sciences, Associate Editor (2020-2023)