Professor Gülgün Kayakutlu received her BSc and MSc in Industrial Engineering from the Middle East Technical University (METU), Ankara, Turkey. She then worked at the International Energy Agency, Paris, France, for seven years as a system engineer developing energy management software. She returned Turkey as a technical manager of a software company and acted as the General Manager of Sybase Databases in Turkey for three years. Following this professional experience, she completed a PhD dissertation on Energy Distribution Strategies in Engineering Management Program (2004), Marmara University, Istanbul, Turkey. In 2017, she was assigned as a Professor of Energy Optimization in ITU Energy Institute after having served as an instructor in ITU Industrial Engineering Department for 11 years. Professor Kayakutlu supervised 6 PhD dissertations and 15 MSc theses in Industrial Engineering and 6 MSc theses in Energy Systems Management. The majority of her SCI indexed articles, books and book chapters are on energy planning and optimization using artificial intelligence or machine learning. Professor Kayakutlu is focused on energy asset optimization, demand site management, micro grid control and management, EV planning and route optimization using machine learning techniques. She acted as an AI consultant or project coordinator in European projects as well as local scientific research projects.

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