Speakers

Sadan Kulturel-Konak

Sadan Kulturel‐Konak is a Professor of Management Information Systems and the Director of Flemming Creativity, Entrepreneurship and Economic Development (CEED) Center at Penn State Berks. Dr. Kulturel also has a courtesy appointment at Penn State Harold and Inge Marcus Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering. She received her Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Auburn University. Dr. Kulturel’s research focuses on modeling and optimizing complex systems using hybrid approaches combining heuristic methods and exact techniques from probability and operations research. The primary application areas of her research include designing and redesigning facilities to provide significant economic benefits for the US industries. She has published her disciplinary research in highly regarded journals, including IIE Transactions, Operations Research Letters, INFORMS Journal on Computing, International Journal of Production Research, and European Journal of Operational Research. Dr. Kulturel is also interested in pedagogical research regarding entrepreneurship/STEM fields, such as professional skill development, teamwork in online and offline settings, and gender differences in learning styles. She is a member of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE), and the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). She served as Chair of the INFORMS-Women in OR/MS (WORMS), INFORMS- Facility Logistics Special Interest Group, and ASEE Middle Atlantic Section. She is currently an academic member of the College Industry Council on Material Handling Education (CICMHE). She is an Associate Editor of the Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence (Elsevier). She has been a principal investigator in sponsored projects from National Science Foundation (NSF) and VentureWell.  sadan@psu.edu