Dr. Esra Büyüktahtakın Toy is a Professor in the Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech and the Director of the Systems Optimization and Machine Learning (SysOptiMaL) Lab. She is also an affiliated faculty member with the Global Change Center, the Invasive Species Collaborative, and the Center for Emerging, Zoonotic and Arthropod-borne Pathogens at Virginia Tech. Her research advances multi-stage stochastic mixed-integer programming and integrates machine learning, deep reinforcement learning, and computational optimization to support risk-averse decision-making under uncertainty. She applies these methods in epidemic disease modeling, healthcare logistics, invasive species management, agriculture, forestry, cancer treatment planning, and undersea warfare search operations. Dr. Toy has received significant recognitions including the NSF CAREER Award, the NSF EPSCoR First Award, five INFORMS Best Publication Awards, and major external funding from agencies such as the NSF, USDA, U.S. Forest Service, and the Office of Naval Research. She has published 45 peer-reviewed journal articles and has contributed extensively to the OR community through invited seminars, keynote talks, panel service, and interdisciplinary collaborations.