# Özgür Demirtaş

Kemal Özgür Demirtaş (born August 12, 1975, Ankara) is a Turkish Finance Professor, Engineer, and Economist.

## Biography

Demirtas was born in Ankara. His father is from the Siverek district of Şanlıurfa and belongs to the Hadidi tribe, while his mother has roots in Thessaloniki and is from Dinar, Afyon. After completing his primary education in Salihli, Manisa, he finished his high school education at İzmir Atatürk High School. He then graduated from the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Boğaziçi University in 1998. He is married to Neslihan Küçükoğlu Demirtaş and they have one child. He runs a YouTube channel with more than 1 million subscribers named after himself where he talks about Turkish economy, as well as his hobbies such as space research. Demirtas has over 6 million followers on Twitter.

### Academic career

Demirtas received his Ph.D. degree in finance from Boston College in 2003. He began his career in Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY), as a tenure track Assistant Professor in 2003. He was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor at Baruch (CUNY) in 2007. Demirtas then became an Adjunct Associate Professor of Finance at New York University Stern School of Business (NYU). He joined Sabancı University as the Head of the Finance Department in 2012, where he has taught ever since. Demirtas was appointed as the Founding Chairman of Center of Excellence in Finance (CEF) in 2014.

### Publications

His works have been published in leading academic journals such as Management Science, Journal of Financial Economics Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, The Review of Financial Studies, and Journal of Business & Economic Statistics. He has published over 35 academic papers and his book on private equity funds was published by Academic Press. Demirtas has also co-authored the book Investing in hedge funds: a guide to measuring risk and return characteristics.

### Professional Activity

Demirtas received Donald J. White Teaching Excellence Award at Boston College in 2002. He received Zicklin School of Business Teaching Excellence Award of Baruch College, where he entered the Dean's List for eight years in a row for his teaching excellence. Demirtas became the youngest faculty member to get the award of Presidential Excellence Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2007. Same year, he was the recipient of Eugene M. Lang Research Fellowship for his work on "Investors' Age and Risk Taking". Demirtas obtained the highest evaluation at Stern School of Business in Spring 2012. Demirtas won the Marie-Curie European Research Fund. He then moved to Istanbul and starting teaching at Sabanci University, where he became Chair Professor of Finance. He consulted Natural Disaster Insurance Institution, which had $500 million in assets under management in 2013. He was appointed as the Founding Chairman of the Center of Excellence in Finance established at the same university. He served as a board member in Akbank, one of the largest banks in Turkey for three terms until 2023. He is a founding board member at FODER, Turkey's first financial literacy association.