Burcu Balçık is a Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering (IE) at Özyeğin University. She received her BSc and MSc degrees in Industrial Engineering from Middle East Technical University and PhD degree from the University of Washington. She has held postdoctoral researcher positions at Northwestern University and visiting researcher positions at Humlog Institute (Hanken) and HEC Montreal.

Balçık's main research interests are in humanitarian logistics and disaster management. She focuses on developing mathematical models, solution methods and insights to support better disaster preparedness and response decision-making. He is interested in developing data-driven analytical approaches to improve the performance of organisations and systems with non-profit and for-profit objectives that serve the purpose of improving the resilience and well-being of vulnerable community groups. In his projects, he collaborates with practitioners from various governmental and non-governmental organisations.

Dr Balçık is an associate editor of Transportation Science and on the editorial boards of Production and Operations Management, Transportation Research Part E, Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Sustainability Analytics and Modelling and Journal of Business Logistics. 

She has taken leading roles in professional societies including INFORMS Public Sector Operations Research (PSOR) and EURO Working Group (EURO-HOpe) focusing on Humanitarian Aid Operations. She is a recipient of the Young Scientist Award from the Turkish Academy of Sciences.