Engin Yildiz
ESR 9
TU Eindhoven
Testimonial
I have graduated from Middle East Technical University in 2014 with an industrial engineering degree together with a minor in corporate finance. After graduation, I started to work in Vodafone Turkey as a young talent who was assigned two different departments, Network Planning and IT Operations, to grasp a holistic view of the business. After a period of almost 1.5 years, I decided to pursue a master’s degree in Boğaziçi University Industrial Engineering Department to see if academia is the place to work for my personality. As I study for my degree, I also worked as a teaching assistant in the same department and had chances to assist courses such as Operations Research and Engineering Economy. Now I am one of the PhD students in OPAC Group of Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences Department of Eindhoven University of Technology. The group is specialized mainly in operations management related topics covering transportation, inventory management, pricing, etc. There are several aspects that was appealing to me while I decided to apply for this position. I could summarize the reasons in two main topics. First, I have applied for this position since it allows PhD students to participate in scientific society (via training weeks, scientific conferences, etc.) in various ways while it also expose them to global scientific community as it requires relocation of the fellows which broadens the coverage of the whole project in terms of being multinational.
The second reason is the suitability of the topic to my research interests and experience I had acquired so far. The most challenging aspect of relocation for me was to give up the whole comfort zone I have built in my home country, Turkey. In return, I have the chance to gain experience living abroad, in The Netherlands, where I realized that some little things in life could matter a lot if you feel the lack or presence of them, such as weather and different foods.
I am now dealing with basically the pricing aspect of omni-channel retailing. I try to find and formalize the effects and result of this new retailing activity on the pricing decisions of the firms. I find it highly reputable and beneficial to be a PhD student via Perform project in my institution because of its communal approach to do science and its multinational coverage as it enables us to contribute and benefit from a broader and diverse scientific society than any PhD student could reach. I could say that my experience so far is really good in terms of recruitment, training weeks, supervision, and, of course, meeting with other ESRs. Training weeks so far have been really beneficial in terms of getting to know whole community and having a good start for the study. As a result, we had chances to swarm with each other as ESRs and supervisors. In terms of profession, I feel support of many Perform’ers while trying to build up my career as a researcher, which makes me feel a lot comfortable. Along with this, exposure to many different cultures creates important opportunities to broaden my view in many aspects. Even if it is probable to change, my long-term goal is to become a researcher in the field of retail operations management and I would like to be within academia in the near future. I want to create value for the global society via giving consultancy to the sector as well as doing research.