Can Deniz Akyüz

C. Deniz Akyuz, PhD

professional biography

Dr. C. Deniz Akyuz has over twenty years of systems engineering experience with a focus on product development, and process streamlining and automation in various fields. He has over twentyfive years of software development experience, specifically in the modeling of scientific systems with a focus on finding practical and acceptable solutions, integrating algorithms for autonomous data analysis, and decision making.

Dr. Akyuz is currently Chief Scientific Officer at EverQuote, Inc., the largest online marketplace for auto insurance. Dr. Akyuz has developed and implemented key distribution algorithms among others for providing constant quality of clicks and leads to our partners, ensuring best consumer alignment at optimal margins. He led the development, scaling, and maintenance of the clicks distribution platform. The algorithms and systems he contributed have improved distribution efficiency with an increase of 25% in revenue.

As Rahway site IT lead for Translational Medicine and Explarotary Biomarker (BMX) Development groups and program manager in Merck Research Labs for Discovery and Preclinical Sciences (DPS) bridging the science and business with Information Management tools, Dr. Akyuz's projects have supported diverse set of scientific and business activities such as BMX Portfolio Management Tool, Basic Development Research Dashboard, Electronic Lab Notebook for medicinal chemists, and revision of Merck's global strategy for handling and management of all human specimens used in clinical and translational medicine research.

Dr. Akyuz headed systems engineering efforts and sample prep for screening activities in the Target Validation department in Merck Research Labs between 2004 and 2007. Under his leadership, his team built a working system in record time enabling significant scientific activities with valuable results for the company. His achievements were recognized with a special award in 2006.

Dr. Akyuz managed the Systems Engineering department at NeoGenesis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. for three years. Working closely with his colleagues in other departments, Dr. Akyuz focused the engineering department to build systems and processes in order to achieve genome scale target validation capabilities. As a result, by 2003, NeoGenesis was capable of screening fifty targets a year, up from a few in 2001, with robust and scalable systems and a five-fold reduction in cost per target.

Prior to NeoGenesis, Dr. Akyuz worked at RVSI IDTrac, where he designed and prototyped a secure global parts tracking system for the aerospace industry. Dr. Akyuz also worked at GTech Corporation on online transaction processing systems, and on next generation games as a member of the new technology development group. At the Fraunhofer Center of Research in Computer Graphics, Dr. Akyuz worked on research for the development of medical diagnostic aid software systems. Early in his career, Dr. Akyuz worked at MIT Lincoln Laboratories implementing neural network algorithms for a classification software package.

Dr. Akyuz consulted for Diversified Technologies, Inc and the Whitehead Institute of Biotechnology at MIT specifying and designing a DNA fingerprint analysis instrument and on the development of an automated DNA fingerprint analysis application.

Dr. Akyuz received his Ph.D. in Physics from Brown University in 1999 with a dissertation entitled: "Resonant Tunneling Measurements of Size-Induced Strain Relaxation" under direction of Prof. Alex Zaslavsky. Dr. Akyuz is the author of six research articles. Dr. Akyuz received his Bachelor of Science in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1993. The subject of his undergraduate dissertation was the study of two-dimensional dynamics of particles in non-linear potential fields. Dr. Akyuz is a member of the Sigma Phi Sigma honor society.