Ozgur Araz, PhD

Assistant Professor

Department of Health Promotion, Social, & Behavioral Health
University of Nebraska Medical Center
College of Public Health

Professional Summary 

• June 2011-present    Assistant Professor, College of Public Health, UNMC
• Jan. 2010-June 2011 Postdoctoral Fellow (NIH-MIDAS), Center for Computational Biology& Bioinformatics, The University of Texas at Austin
• Aug. 2010-Jan. 2011 Lecturer, Information Risk and Operations Management Department, McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin 
• Aug. 2007-Jan. 2010 Research Associate, Decision Theater, Arizona State University, Tempe AZ
• Aug.2006-Aug. 2007 Teaching Assistant, Industrial and Systems Engineering Department, Arizona State University, Tempe AZ

Education

• PhD  Industrial & Systems Engineering, Arizona State University, Dec. 2009
• MS   Industrial Engineering, State University of New York at Buffalo, Aug. 2006
• BS    Industrial Engineering, Istanbul Technical University, June 2005

Research Interests

• Dr. Araz’s research interests are in complex systems thinking, modeling and simulation, operations management in health care, modeling infectious and chronic diseases, decision and cost-effectiveness analysis, Bayesian statistics and stochastic modeling.

Selected Publications

• Araz O.M., Jehn M. Improving public health preparedness through enhanced decision-making environments: a simulation and survey based evaluation. In press (2012) Technological Forecasting and Social Change. doi: 10.1016/j.techfore.2012.09.018. 
• Araz O.M., Lant T., Jehn M., Fowler J.W. Simulation modeling for pandemic decision making: a case study with bi-criteria analysis on school closures. In Press (2012). Decision Support Systems.
• Araz O.M., Damien P., Paltiel D.A., Burke S., van de Geijn B., Galvani A., Meyers L.A. Simulating school closure policies for cost effective pandemic decision making. BMC Public Health(2012), 12:449. doi:10.1186/1471-2458-12-449.
• Araz O.M., Galvani A., Meyers L.A. Geographic Prioritization of Distributing Pandemic Influenza Vaccines. Healthcare Management Science(2012), 15 (3): 175-187.
• Araz O.M., Jehn M., Lant T., Fowler J.W. A new method of exercising pandemic preparedness through an interactive simulation and visualization. Journal of Medical Systems(2012), 36 (3): 1475-1483.
• Araz O.M., Lant T., Fowler J.W., Jehn M. A simulation model for policy decision analysis: a case of influenza pandemic on a university campus. Journal of Simulation(2011) 5: 89-100.
• Rastogi A., Fowler J.W., Carlyle W.M., Araz O.M., Meltz A., Buke B. Supply network capacity planning for semiconductor manufacturing with uncertain demand and correlation in demand considerations. International Journal of Production Economics(2011) 134: 322-332.
• Minimizing service times in a public health emergency: a location allocation model (with J. Fowler, T. Lant).  Proceedings of Industrial Engineering Research Conference, 2011 Reno, Nevada.
• A pandemic influenza simulation model for decision making (with Fowler J.W., Lant T., Jehn M.). Proceedings of Winter Simulation Conference,Austin 2009.
• Simulating pandemic influenza preparedness plan for a public university campus: System Dynamics Approach. (with Lant T., Fowler J.W.). Proceedings of Winter Simulation Conference,Miami 2008.
• Two-stage stochastic programming for workforce agility with cross training of workers (with John Fowler). Proceedings of Industrial Engineering Research Conference, 2008 Vancouver, Canada.
   

Professional Affiliations

• IIE, Institute of Industrial Engineers- Member
• INFORMS, Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences- Member
• Omega Rho, The Honor Society of INFORMS- Member