Meet the team

Deniz Angıner, PhD co-leads the platform’s research vision and scientific development together with Çelim Yıldızhan. His research focuses on banking, financial intermediation, and market efficiency, with particular emphasis on the functioning, resilience, and stability of financial systems. His work has been published in leading finance journals, including Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Finance, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Financial Intermediation, Journal of Banking and Finance, and Journal of Financial Stability. He has held academic appointments at Simon Fraser University and Virginia Tech, and previously served as an economist at the World Bank, where he contributed to research on global financial systems, banking markets, systemic risk, and financial regulation. His research has also informed public policy discussions at the highest levels: while at Virginia Tech, he was invited to provide expert testimony before the U.S. Senate Banking Committee on the persistence of implicit government guarantees and the economics of “too-big-to-fail” institutions. Deniz earned his PhD in Finance from the University of Michigan after graduating at the top of his class from the University of Toronto with dual Bachelor’s degrees in finance and accounting. He was the valedictorian of his high school in Toronto and studied at the American Collegiate Institute of İzmir. Prior to graduate studies, he worked as a consultant in the New York office of Oliver Wyman, where he advised clients on financial institutions and market strategy. He is currently advancing a new research program using large-scale retail trading data and randomized field interventions.

‍

Çelim Yıldızhan, PhD co-leads the platform’s research vision and scientific development together with Deniz Angıner. His work sits at the intersection of empirical asset pricing, financial accounting, and household finance, using high-resolution data and theory-consistent empirical strategies to study how limits in attention, processing capacity, and incentive alignment generate predictable distortions in pricing, reporting, and portfolio choice. His research has been published in leading finance and accounting journals, including Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Review of Accounting Studies, Review of Finance, and The Accounting Review. He has held academic appointments at the Lee Business School at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; Koç University; and the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia. Çelim earned his PhD in Finance from the University of Michigan, an MS in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University, and a BSEE from Cornell University. He studied at İzmir Science High School and at the American Collegiate Institute in İzmir, ranked among the top two hundred students nationwide in the Turkish University Entrance Examinations, was selected as one of twenty students by TÜBİTAK for preparation toward the International Physics Olympiads, and later studied in the United States on a Turkish government scholarship that he fully repaid to Turkish taxpayers. Prior to his doctoral work, he worked as a product manager and venture capital associate in Silicon Valley. He is currently advancing a new research program using large-scale retail trading data and randomized field interventions.

Aylin leads engineering and oversees the development of the platform’s core infrastructure and production systems. She is an experienced senior software engineer specializing in scalable system architecture, security, and data integrity for large-scale data and financial analytics platforms. Aylin has deep expertise in parsing complex and unstructured datasets, designing data pipelines and processing systems that transform raw information into reliable analytical inputs. She holds a degree in Computer Science from Bilkent University and an MS in Computer Science from the University of Florida. Prior to TuneUp, she worked on the design and deployment of production software systems and digital platforms through engineering roles and collaborations with organizations including Sony Labs, Dentsu, and Wedding Channel, contributing to high-availability applications supporting large user bases and data-intensive workflows. A graduate of Kadıköy Anatolian High School, Aylin ranked among the top three hundred students nationwide in the Turkish University Entrance Examinations.

‍

‍

Ufuk acts as an advisor to TuneUp and provides guidance on product architecture and scalable software development. A graduate of Bilkent University’s Electrical Engineering program, he is a serial entrepreneur in both the United States and Turkey and a product architect with extensive experience designing and building scalable financial technology platforms. He has founded and led multiple technology ventures, developing software systems and data-driven products serving financial and analytics applications across diverse markets. Ufuk graduated at the top of his class from İzmir Science High School and ranked among the top twenty-five students nationwide in the Turkish University Entrance Examinations. He was also one of twenty students nationally selected by TÜBİTAK for advanced preparation toward the International Biology Olympiads. His work focuses on building robust, scalable systems that bridge advanced analytics, financial infrastructure, and real-world product deployment at production scale.

‍

Atakan Çetinsoy serves as a senior Product Development Advisor to TuneUp, helping shape the company’s product strategy, market positioning, and the translation of advanced analytics into scalable user-facing financial products. He is currently Chief Business Development Manager at BigML and Accushoot, and brings extensive experience in applied machine learning, product management, and technology commercialization across data-driven industries. Prior to BigML, Atakan held senior product and technology roles at Apple, Yahoo, FedEx, and MoneyStrands, where he contributed to the development and scaling of consumer and financial technology platforms and supported the launch of analytics-driven digital products serving global markets. His work focuses on bridging advanced technological capabilities with practical product design, commercialization strategy, and sustainable business growth, with particular strength in converting complex data science systems into intuitive, high-adoption products. He holds an MBA from the University of Georgia, completed on a full scholarship, and a BSEE from Boğaziçi University. A graduate of İzmir Bornova Anatolian High School, Atakan ranked among the top twenty students nationwide in the Turkish University Entrance Examinations. He also competed as a member of the athletics team at Boğaziçi University in the 100-meter dash.

‍

Maria Raykhlina leads TuneUp’s global go-to-market, communications, and investor engagement strategy, connecting product development with market positioning, strategic partnerships, and institutional growth. She brings extensive international experience across product management, corporate strategy, and global market expansion, with leadership experience spanning the United States, Russia, and Turkey. Prior to TuneUp, Maria served as Director of Global Expansion at United Payment in Turkey, where she led the company’s expansion into the Caucasus and Central Asia. She previously held senior product and strategy roles at major multinational organizations in the United States, including Senior Director of Product Management at Equifax, Internal Consultant within General Motors Strategic Initiatives, Market Strategy Manager at CHEP, and Senior Business Analyst at Whirlpool. Earlier in her career, she worked at Ericsson in Russia. Her work focuses on translating advanced product capabilities into compelling market narratives, scalable distribution strategies, and trusted investor-facing communications across global markets. Maria holds an MBA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a Specialist (MS) degree in International Economics from MGIMO University in Russia. She is also a graduate of a specialized mathematics high school in Moscow.

‍

Altuğ Turgay is a Doctoral Researcher in Finance at Simon Fraser University and a co-founding researcher at TuneUp. His research focuses on asset pricing and behavioral finance, combining large-scale data analysis with applied financial modeling to study investor behavior and market dynamics. At TuneUp, he plays a central role in the development and empirical validation of the platform’s models, contributing extensively to projects based on high-frequency and large-scale trading datasets. In particular, he has been a key contributor to the analysis of tens of millions of individual retail trading transactions across multiple countries, helping uncover systematic behavioral patterns in investor decision-making. Altuğ holds a B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering and an M.Sc. in Finance from Bilkent University, where he received the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Academic Performance during his graduate studies. He ranked among the top thousand students nationwide in the Turkish University Entrance Examinations and studied at Bilkent University on a full scholarship.

‍

Cengizhan Büyükdağ is a Doctoral Researcher in Finance at Simon Fraser University and a co-founding researcher at TuneUp. His research focuses on behavioral finance, household finance, and the intersection of behavioral genetics and finance, combining interdisciplinary scientific training with large-scale empirical financial analysis. He holds dual degrees in Business Administration and Molecular Biology & Genetics from Koç University, where he studied on a full scholarship after ranking among the top two thousand students nationwide in the Turkish University Entrance Examinations. Before beginning his doctoral research, Cengizhan worked as a research assistant at Yale University in the United States and at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in France, and contributed to joint research projects between the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Koç University. At TuneUp, he has been a key contributor to projects involving the analysis of tens of millions of individual retail trading transactions across multiple countries, bringing exceptional data engineering capability, pragmatic empirical judgment, and interdisciplinary problem-solving skills to large-scale behavioral finance research.

‍