Alara is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Business Analytics and Digital Transformation at ESCP Business School, Paris Campus. Her research interests revolve around the experimental/empirical analysis and optimization of choice and journey, particularly in digital settings. Some of the questions she is currently investigating are how to optimize digital nudges in product listing pages and how to optimize user interfaces to improve decision-maker adherence to algorithm recommendations. She has presented her work at POMS, INFORMS, EWG Retail, and POMS International.
She holds a Ph.D. in Operations Management and Information Systems from Koç University in Istanbul and a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering with a minor in Computer Science from Columbia University in New York. Before her Ph.D., she worked as a Senior Consultant at EY, focusing on strategy and marketing projects for retail, automobile, finance, textile, and telecommunication companies.