Dr. Burcu Akinci is Paul Christiano Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and a member of the National Academies of Construction.  She earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the Middle East Technical University (Ankara, Turkey), MBA from Bilkent University (Ankara, Turkey), and Master’s and PhD degrees in Civil and Environmental Engineering with a specialization in Construction Engineering and Management from Stanford University.

Her research interests modeling and reasoning about information-rich histories of buildings and infrastructure systems, to streamline construction and infrastructure operations.  She specifically focuses on investigating the utilization and integration of building information models with data capture technologies, such as 3D imaging and embedded sensors, to create digital twins of construction projects and infrastructure operations, and develop approaches to support proactive and predictive operations and management.

Dr. Akinci has two patents, one provisional patent, over 70 refereed journal publications, and 100 conference publications.  She was the PI of more than $6M grants and co-PI of more than $10M grants, supported by federal and state agencies and industry.  She has given over 100 invited presentations and co-edited books on CAD/GIS Integration and on Embedded Commissioning.