Burak Kazaz

Burak Kazaz is the Steven Becker Professor of Supply Chain Management at the Whitman School of Management and the Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor for Teaching Excellence at Syracuse University. He serves as the Director of the Brethen Institute at Syracuse University. At Whitman, Dr. Kazaz has been the Whitman Teaching Fellow from 2010 to 2012, Whitman Research Fellow from 2016 to 2018, and he has served as the Executive Director of the H.H. Franklin Center for Supply Chain Management between 2013 and 2017.

Dr. Kazaz’s research interests include risk mitigation, supply chain finance, and socially-responsible supply chains. His publications helped many agricultural and retail firms in their global operations. He established the field of “wine analytics,” and his work on the pricing of wine futures has been influential in the wine industry benefiting winemakers and distributors. His publications can be found in premier journals such as Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Management Science, Operations Research, and Production and Operations Management. His impact is evidenced in that he is frequently featured in popular media including The Wall Street Journal, Wine Advocate, Wine Spectator, RobertParker.com, Forbes, Bloomberg, Financial Times and the fine wine stock market Liv-ex. He enjoys collaborating with industry; his work is recognized by IBM, British Petroleum, and Procter & Gamble, and is supported through grants from Staples, IBM, and APICS.

Dr. Kazaz’s papers have been the recipient of numerous awards: The 2017 Wickham Skinner Prize from the Production and Operations Management Society, the 2016 Best Paper Award from the College of Humanitarian Operations and Crises Management of the Production and Operations Management Society, the 2015 INFORMS President’s Pick as the best paper among all INFORMS journal publications, and the 2014 Best Analytical Paper Award from the Decision Sciences Institute. Two of his publications were selected for the 2017 INFORMS Editors’ Cut, another paper was a runner-up for the 2018 iFORM Best Paper Award.

Dr. Kazaz has been the longest-serving board member of the Manufacturing and Service Operations Management (MSOM) Society: President, Executive Vice President and President-Elect, Vice President of Meetings and Communications, Chair of iFORM (integration of finance, operations and risk management) specialty interest group. He also served as an associate editor for Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, and is currently a senior editor for Production and Operations Management and an associate editor for IISE Transactions. 

Dr. Kazaz’s teaching has been recognized with numerous awards. In 2012, he is named as the Meredith Professor for Teaching Excellence, the highest honor given at Syracuse University. He is the recipient of the first-ever Whitman School of Management Teaching Innovation Award in 2011.

Dr. Kazaz received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in industrial engineering from Middle East Technical University in Turkiye and his Ph.D. from the Krannert Graduate School of Management at Purdue University. Prior to this appointment, he was a faculty member at the University of Miami and at Loyola University of Chicago, taught at the Executive Education programs of the University of Chicago. He was a visiting professor at Cornell University and the University of California Berkeley where he taught MBA courses and doctoral seminars. Dr. Kazaz recently developed two unique courses: (1) wine analytics that features analytical methods beneficial for winemakers, distributors and importers, and the financial exchange where fine wines are traded, and (2) designing supply chains for growth which relies on design thinking principles and is popular among start-ups and small firms.

Prior to his academic career, Dr. Kazaz worked at IBM. Additional information about Dr. Kazaz can be obtained at his personal site from his Whitman web page.