Biography

Koray Özpolat is a Professor of Supply Chain Management at the University of Rhode Island. He earned his Ph.D. in Business and Management from the University of Maryland, College Park (2011). His research focuses on the geopolitics of supply chains, humanitarian logistics and disaster relief, emerging supply chain technologies, and the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Koray began his career as an electrical engineer, completing his M.S. at Colorado State University before working in Turkiye on network security projects at TÜBİTAK and teaching programming at Istanbul University. His transition to supply chain management was shaped by his work as a Logistics Systems Analyst with the United Nations in Amman, Jordan, where he supported procurement and logistics operations serving over five million refugees. This experience motivated him to pursue advanced training in supply chain management, including a Graduate Diploma from CIPS (U.K.), and ultimately a Ph.D.

His research broadly examines global supply chains with a recent emphasis on geopolitical dynamics. He has published in leading journals (Information Systems Research, Decision Support Systems, Transportation Research PartE) and is also active in scholarship of teaching and learning with multiple publications on student engagement and innovative teaching methods.

Koray is a dedicated educator who has taught across undergraduate, MBA, MS, and doctoral programs in a variety of formats (in-person, hybrid, and online). His teaching spans courses such as Geopolitics of Business and Global Supply Chains (honors course), Global Supply Chain Management, and doctoral seminars. He has taught internationally in the United States, Europe, and Asia, and is committed to supporting first-generation and underrepresented students at a public university.

He is actively engaged in academic leadership and professional service. Koray serves as Associate Editor for Transportation Journal and the Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education and has held leadership roles in the Decision Sciences Institute. At URI, he oversees the Ph.D. program in Supply Chain Management and has served in the Faculty Senate and on the Executive Committee of the AAUP (American Association of University Professors) He has supervised the following doctoral students who have gone on to academic careers across the United States.

• Li “Kara” Liu (2024), Roger Williams University
• Jiayuan “Jay” Zhang (2021), University of Wisconsin, Whitewater
• Hee Yoon Kwon (2020), CITADEL, Military College of South Carolina

He also contributes to public discourse through op-eds and media engagement on topics including supply chains, geopolitics, and public policy. A global scholar at heart, Koray has lived and worked across three continents. He and his family call Rhode Island home – a journey he reflects on his Providence Journal op-ed “A Turk’s Journey to be a Rhode Islander”