Mert Gürbüzbalaban

Curriculum vitae

Curriculum vitae


A summary is below; the PDF is the complete, authoritative record — including the full publication list, teaching history, and service.

Download the CV (PDF)

Appointments

Appointments

2016 –

Rutgers University

Department of Management Science and Information Systems, Rutgers Business School. Affiliated faculty in Electrical & Computer Engineering and in Statistics; member of DIMACS.

2014 – 2016

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Postdoctoral associate, Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS), hosted by Asuman Ozdaglar and Pablo A. Parrilo.

Education

Education

2012

Ph.D. in Mathematics, Courant Institute, New York University

Kurt Friedrichs Prize for an outstanding dissertation. M.S. in Mathematics, 2009.

2007

Diplôme d’ingénieur, École Polytechnique

Majors in applied mathematics and economics.

2005

B.Sc. in Electrical–Electronics Engineering and B.Sc. in Mathematics, Boğaziçi University

Valedictorian — ranked first among all graduating engineering, mathematics, and double-major students.

Honors

Honors and awards

2025

Dean’s Research Seed Fund Award, Rutgers Business School

2024

Dean’s Meritorious Teaching Award, Rutgers Business School

2022 – 2025

Dean’s Research Professor Award, Rutgers Business School

2021

Dean’s Summer Fellowship Award, Rutgers Business School

2020

Dean’s Young Research Fellow Award, Rutgers Business School

2019

Best Paper Honorable Mention Award, ICML

2019

Junior Faculty Research Excellence Award, Rutgers Business School

2017

Householder Symposium XX Travel Award

2015

SIAM Travel Award

2013

Kurt Friedrichs Award for the best dissertation, NYU

2007–12

Henry MacCracken Fellowship, NYU

2005–07

French Government Scholarship (Bourse d’études), École Polytechnique

2005

Valedictorian, Boğaziçi University; Nadir Orhan Bengisu Award (best graduating student, Electrical–Electronics Engineering)

1999

Silver Medal, National Mathematical Olympiad (Turkey)

Funding

Grants

2024–2027

Office of Naval Research — PI. “Primal-Dual Algorithms for Minimax Problems with Applications to Distributionally Robust Learning.” $400,000.

2021–2024

Office of Naval Research — PI. “Robust Primal-Dual Algorithms for Saddle Point Problems with Applications to Multi-Agent Systems.” $326,647.

2021–2024

NSF, Division of Mathematical Sciences (DMS-2053485) — PI. “Langevin MCMC Methods for Machine Learning.” $180,009.

2018–2021

NSF, Division of Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF-1814888) — Single PI. “Communication-Efficient Distributed Algorithms for Machine Learning.” $464,412.

2017–2020

NSF, Division of Mathematical Sciences (DMS-1723085) — Single PI. “Beyond With-replacement Sampling for Large-Scale Data Analysis and Optimization.” $125,001.

Industry

Industry experience

2013 – 2014

Bloomberg LP, New York

Quantitative researcher — volatility extraction and dividend/borrow-cost prediction from options data.

2012 – 2013

Citadel LLC, New York

Quantitative researcher — models and strategies for high-frequency equity markets.

2011

Barclays Capital, New York

Quantitative summer associate — quasi-Gaussian short-rate models with local volatility.

2010

Jump Trading, Chicago

Summer intern — automated strategies for index futures.

2007

AXA Investment Managers, Paris

Visiting quantitative researcher — variance reduction for Monte Carlo pricing.

Advisingcurrent group

Students and postdocs

2025 –

Hamza Rafi — Ph.D. student, Rutgers Business School (jointly advised)

2025 –

Meija Chen — Ph.D. student, Rutgers Business School (jointly advised)

2025 –

Mustafa Ali Kutbay — Ph.D. student, Rutgers Business School

Alumni

Graduated students and former postdocs

2025

Yasa Syed — Ph.D., Rutgers Business School (co-advised)

2024

Rishabh Dixit — Ph.D., Electrical & Computer Engineering, Rutgers University (co-advised with Waheed U. Bajwa)

Now: Visiting research scholar, UC San Diego

2023

Yuanhan Hu — Ph.D., Operations Research, Rutgers Business School

Now: Data scientist, Wells Fargo

2023

Landi Zhu — Ph.D., Operations Research, Rutgers Business School (co-advised with Andrzej Ruszczyński)

Now: Quantitative researcher, Barclays

2022 – 2023

Yassine Laguel — Postdoctoral associate

Now: Tenured faculty member, Université Côte d’Azur (Nice)

2022

Bugra Can — Ph.D., Operations Research, Rutgers Business School

Now: Applied scientist, Amazon (New York)

Visiting students hosted: Onur Ünlü (Bilkent University, 2021); Nurdan Kuru (Sabancı University, 2019); Saeed Soori (University of Toronto, 2018 – 2019); Alireza Fallah (MIT, 2018); Nuri Denizcan Vanli (MIT, 2016 – 2017).

Service

Professional service

  • Associate Editor, Mathematics of Operations Research (2024– ).
  • Program committee, Learning for Dynamics and Control (L4DC) 2025.
  • Co-organizer and program chair, NeurIPS 2023 Workshop “Heavy Tails in Machine Learning: Structure, Stability, Dynamics.”
  • Special issue editor, Probability in the Engineering and Informational Sciences — “Probability in Service Operations and Data Analytics.”
  • INFORMS Nicholson Prize Committee (2021).
  • Track chair in Operations Research, IISE Annual Conference (2019).
  • Reviewing committee, Conference on Learning Theory (COLT), 2020.
  • Panelist for the National Science Foundation; referee for NSERC (Canada).
  • Session organizer: INFORMS Annual Meetings (2018–2023), SIAM conferences (2021–2023), INFORMS Optimization Conference (2020), INFORMS International (2016).
  • Co-organizer of the MSIS departmental seminar series, Rutgers (2016– ).
  • Ph.D. admissions and hiring committees, Operations Research, Rutgers Business School (2017– ).
  • Referee for Operations Research, Mathematics of Operations Research, Mathematical Programming, SIAM Journal on Optimization, Journal of Machine Learning Research, SIAM Journal on Matrix Analysis and Applications, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, NeurIPS, ICML, COLT, and other journals and conferences.

This page summarizes the CV; for the complete list of publications see the archive or the PDF above.