Ayyuce Begum Bektas

Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Data Science, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Begum is a postdoctoral researcher specializing in optimization, statistics, and computational biology, developing theoretically grounded and efficient methods. She received her Bachelor’s, Master’s, and PhD degrees from Sabancı, Boğaziçi, and Koç Universities, respectively, with her doctoral research centered on kernel methods, regularization, and interpretability. She later developed probabilistic ML for uncertainty-aware prediction and survival analysis at the Sloan Kettering Institute. Her current work integrates statistical learning, scalable kernels, and deep learning to model complex biological systems, advancing interpretable, robust, and reproducible methods for biomedicine and beyond.

Curriculum Vitae
Personal Information
Name: Ayyuce Begum Bektas
Nationality: Turkish
Address: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, CLS Building, 3 Blackfan Circle, Boston, MA 02115
Email address: [at] ds.dfci.harvard.edu
Education
2009 – 2013 Bachelor of Science, Industrial Engineering, Sabancı University, Istanbul, Turkey
2014 – 2017 Master of Science, Industrial Engineering, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey
2017 – 2022 Doctor of Philosophy, Industrial Engineering, Operations Management, Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey
Scientific Career
2012 – 2013 Undergraduate Teaching Assistant, Sabancı University, Istanbul, Turkey
2017 – 2020 Research Project Scholar, Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBİTAK-EEEAG 117E181), Istanbul, Turkey
2017 – 2022 Graduate Research, Teaching Assistant, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey
2022 – 2025 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Cancer Data Science, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
2025 – present Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Data Science, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute