Pinar Keskinocak, professor in the Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering (ISyE), was appointed the College of Engineering’s ADVANCE professor by Gary S. May, dean of the college. “I am pleased that Pinar has accepted this role as the College of Engineering’s ADVANCE professor,” said May. “She will be working with our faculty and administrators to reduce gender bias and increase career advancement opportunities for women in the College as well as the Georgia Tech as a whole.”

The NSF ADVANCE Program is designed to increase the participation of women in the scientific and engineering workforce through increased representation and advancement of women in academic scientific and engineering careers. To meet this goal, the program provides opportunities for both individuals and organizations in an effort to support new approaches to improving the climate for women in U.S. academic institutions and to facilitate women's advancement to the highest ranks of academic leadership.

The ADVANCE program at Georgia Tech is coordinated by the Institute's ADVANCE Team (ADVANCE professors from the six colleges and the Center for the Study of Women, Science, and Technology). Team members take an integrated approach to institutional factors supporting the full participation and advancement of women faculty. In this position, Keskinocak will work within the College and across the Institute on a number of women faculty issues including developing and implementing strategies and initiatives to address gender equity issues in hiring, promotion and retention of women faculty.

Keskinocak is the William W. George Chair in the ISyE. She is also the associate director of research for the Health Systems Institute, and the co-director of the Center for Health and Humanitarian Systems at Georgia Tech. Keskinocak's research focuses on the applications of operations research and management science with societal impact, particularly health and humanitarian applications, supply chain management, and logistics/transportation. Her recent work has addressed infectious disease modeling, evaluating intervention strategies, and resource allocation; catch-up scheduling for vaccinations; hospital operations management; disaster preparedness and response (e.g., prepositioning inventory); debris management; centralized and decentralized price and lead time decisions.