About
I'm Ilayda, an industrial engineer who got more interested in the systems people make than the ones machines do.
I work in computational social science: using the tools of data (language models, time series, networks) to ask social questions. How do societies decide under uncertainty? How does a trend go from nowhere to everywhere? How does the way we talk about something as migration, money, each other shift before the thing itself does? I like questions that sit between disciplines, where an engineer's instinct for structure meets a social scientist's tolerance for mess.
Most of my work lives in Turkish political and consumer discourse like in parliamentary records, social media, the sound of a public arguing with itself. I came to it from a few years in analytics, where I learned that the interesting signal is almost never the obvious one.
I write at Simularch, a slow newsletter about complex systems and pattern recognition; soft chaos, sharp patterns. It's where I think out loud about the things that don't fit into a paper.
Right now I'm at Koç University, studying how people form expectations about inflation; a small, strange, very human kind of forecasting. After that I'm spending a year moving slowly across East and Southeast Asia, which feels like the right way to understand how places actually work: on foot, without a model.
I read widely and a little obsessively; theory, philosophy, systems thinking. If you want to start an argument, ask me about Bauman.
Computational social science
Istanbul, Turkey
ls ./programs/
2023
S360
Alumni, S360 Fellowship
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A fellowship for sustainable-futures leadership, multidisciplinary and impact-driven.
2022
Akbank Youth Academy
Alumni, Akbank Youth Academy
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Entrepreneurship, sustainability, technology, and emotional intelligence, taught across disciplines.
2021
Yenibirlider Association
Alumni, LEAD21 Program
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Selected from 50,000+ applicants to build leadership for community transformation.
2021
Simurg Association
Chairperson of the Executive Board
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Led a youth NGO of 750+ students across 11 projects; 74 active members aged 16–26.
2020
Simurg Association
Co-Founder, 2C1N Project
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A 9-year youth initiative on the UN SDGs, helping high-schoolers shape visions for 2030.
A few places I've written and spoken about this work, in Turkish and English, for general audiences.
Writing · HBR Türkiye
Harvard Business Review Türkiye
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My author archive at HBR Türkiye.
Writing · Zümrüdüanka
Zümrüdüanka Journal
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My author archive at Zümrüdüanka.
Podcast · Fark Eden Gönüllüler
Data-driven guidance for decision-makers
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Episode B07: making the case for data in socioeconomic decision-making.