Being born in London to a Scottish mother and a Turkish father was only the beginning of Reha Uzsoy’s, C.A. Anderson Distinguished Professor, multicultural life experiences which include living on four continents. Reha’s journey may have started in London, but his family returned to Turkey after his father obtained his PhD. The next journey took the family to Zambia where his father held a teaching position. They later returned to Turkey where Reha attended college at Bogazici University and later worked as a production engineer with Arcelik AS, a major appliance manufacturer in Istanbul. Eventually Reha moved to the United States to pursue his PhD at the University of Florida.
Reha joined the ISE department in 2007 after 17 years at Purdue University, where he was a professor of Industrial Engineering and Director of the Laboratory for Extended Enterprises at Purdue, an interdisciplinary research center in the area of supply chain management and logistics. While at Purdue, he received undergraduate and graduate teaching awards, the Outstanding Young Industrial Engineer in Education award in 1997 and was named a Fellow of the Institute of Industrial Engineers in 2005.
For most of his academic career Reha has worked in production planning and control and supply chain management, especially with the semiconductor industry. This experience has allowed him to hold visiting positions at Intel, IC Delco and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Since coming to NC State he has continued to conduct his National Science Foundation supported research in these areas, while collaborating with colleagues Russell King and Mike Kay to introduce new master’s level courses in production systems and supply chain management. These classes are a part of the new Master of Supply Chain Engineering and Management (MSCEM) degree program that will admit its first students in the summer of 2014 (See Co-Directors Named for MSCEM).
But production control and supply chain management aren’t Reha’s only interests, a visit to his office will reveal a small army of some of history’s greatest machines.
When Reha was a teenager he loved to build scale models, especially World War II tanks and airplanes. One day thirty years later he was taking his daughter to a craft store in Raleigh for some knitting supplies and passed the scale model display. His passion for building was rekindled and he continues to build models today. “I have built entirely too many models over the years,” said Reha. “There is quite a bit of engineering that goes into creating scale models.” He combines his interest in history with his model building skills to reproduce authentic, historically accurate paint schemes. “The hardest part is making them look beaten up and dirty,” he jokes.