Dr. Özalp Özer
- Research Professor of Management Science
- George and Fonsa Brody Distinguished Professor in Management (Former)
The George and Fonsa Brody Charitable Fund established the professorship in 2017. Özer was appointed in September 2018. The professorship supports the research and scholarly activities of the holder in the Naveen Jindal School of Management.
“I am passionate about working with students, researchers and practitioners on the next new ‘think’ that calls for the exciting opportunity to explore, learn, define, solve and contribute. I strive to work on high-impact management topics. I hope to leave a lasting and positive impact on the lives of organizations and people. I cannot imagine working at a better place than an institution that has a mission of producing high-quality products, services, research and graduates, and that is rigorous and fair in achieving its mission. UTD today is such an institution. Hence, this investiture is an honor.”
Dr. Özalp Özer joined the Naveen Jindal School of Management at UT Dallas in 2009. He previously held faculty positions at Columbia University and Stanford University. A global value chain design, management and innovation expert, Özer spent his 2013-14 sabbatical as a visiting professor at MIT Sloan School of Management.
Özer’s areas of specialty include end-to-end design and management of global value chains, entrepreneurship and innovation, strategic investment decisions, operations and marketing. His most recent research defines and quantifies trust and also prescribes how organizations can establish trusting and trustworthy, hence cooperative, relationships within and across businesses. He has published on these topics in leading international journals, such as Management Science and Operations Research. He also co-edited the Oxford Handbook of Pricing Management.
Özer works closely with industry and has consulted for companies including Ericsson, General Motors, HP, IBM, Neiman Marcus and University Hospitals of Cleveland. He has designed software that optimizes market timing, pricing and promotions decisions, and has also developed data-driven algorithms used by firms such as IBM as a tool for their consulting and business practices. Most recently he has been designing and building predictive algorithms to detect and warn patients at risk for sepsis, a potentially life-threatening condition caused by the human body’s response to an infection. He aims to work closely with large hospital systems in reinforcing decisions and management with data-driven approaches to improve patient outcomes.
Özer has given executive training workshops and seminars on value chain design and management, entrepreneurship and innovation as well as methodological topics, such as operations management and pricing management.
He was named as a Favorite Professor by Poets & Quants for Executives in 2015. He was also recognized with the Teaching Excellence Award at MIT Sloan Executive Education in 2014, a teaching award at Columbia University in 2009, and the Eugene Grant Teaching Award at Stanford in 2003 and 2004 — all by the votes of his students. He is also the founder of Fathomd, an education technology company that designs and distributes business games for better learning.
Özer received a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from Bilkent University. He also received a master’s and a PhD in operations research from Columbia University.