Pelin Pekgün
Optimizing Decisions

One of the most unexpected lessons learned by many Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic was the importance and vulnerability of supply chains. 

As factory shutdowns and material shortages had people scrambling for everything from toilet paper to disinfecting wipes, the complexity of supply chains they’d likely never thought about became top of mind for many.

But Pelin Pekgün, Thomas H. Davis Professor in Business and Professor of Analytics, was unsurprised. Pekgün’s work over the past two decades has focused on supply chain management and pricing, both in the corporate world and academia. And she says the new appreciation for supply chains has brought more interest in her work.

“One positive outcome of COVID-19 might be the heightened awareness of supply chains,” she says. “People recognize their importance when everyday items, like toilet paper, are missing from store shelves. I’ve also noticed an increased interest among my students in learning more about supply chains.”

Pekgün says she always had a passion for mathematics, so studying industrial engineering felt like a perfect fit because it allowed her to optimize decision-making using analytical tools. She earned a BS and MS in the discipline from Bogazici University in Turkey, then went on to earn a Ph.D. in industrial and systems engineering at Georgia Tech. Midway through her Ph.D., Pekgün had an internship at JDA Software that turned into a six-year career developing pricing and revenue management solutions.

But Pekgün knew she wanted to return to academia. She began teaching full-time in 2011 at Georgia Tech’s School of Industrial and Systems Engineering as a visiting professor and then served as a professor at the University of South Carolina’s Darla Moore School of Business for 11 years. She came to Wake Forest in January 2024.

Pekgün draws on her industry experience in her research and teaching, combining supply chain management and pricing and revenue management, with a deep commitment to bridging the gap between academia and industry. She has devoted some of her work to supply chain management issues such as buyer-supplier relationships and strategic interactions between the players in a supply chain. 

“That also relates to one of my core teaching areas, supply chain analytics, which helps students explore various aspects such as inventory management, network design, coordination issues, and resilient and sustainable operations,” she says. 

Much of Pekgün’s private sector work focused on the hotel industry, and she still draws on that experience in her research. Some of her recent work has explored demand modeling and pricing strategies for hotels and how factors such as personalized offers and online reviews can impact customer demand.

“Companies are increasingly designing personalized offers tailored to customer needs,” she says. “I approach this through the lens of demand modeling, focusing on improving demand estimation at the individual customer choice level, even when a company cannot observe customers who choose not to purchase any product.”

Over the last six years, Pekgün has focused on humanitarian and nonprofit operations, exploring how analytics and data-driven decision making can be utilized to address societal issues such as food insecurity, food waste, and access to healthcare. 

“Being motivated to address food insecurity and reduce food waste in the supply chain, I’ve worked with food banks to make better decisions with the limited resources they have,” she says. “Their mission is not to maximize profit, but to maximize the number of food-insecure people they can reach.”

The humanitarian operations domain truly excites Pekgün because it allows her to use analytical tools and operational concepts to make a difference on a societal level.

“This work really taps into my passion for leveraging analytics to make better and smarter decisions for a more equitable world,” she says. This also reflects in her teaching. “I aim to empower the next generation of analytics professionals to see their field not only as a tool for better decision making but also as a means for societal impact.”