Prior to this role, Yavuz was Engineering Operations leader managing engineering programs, technical planning, budget, productivity initiatives and overall engineering operations of Evaluation & Optimization organization at GE Oil & Gas which includes Wireline, Drilling and Production Monitoring & Optimization Product Lines. Yavuz also managed R&D teams while serving as the Director of Research at the Woodlands Technology Center of Baker Hughes.
Yavuz received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering and his MSc in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from the University of Illinois at Urbana, IL and, an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business, NY. He also holds a BSc degree and a MSc degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Middle East Technical University, Turkey.

 At the University of Houston, he held the position of Adjunct Professor, both in the Mechanical Engineering Department (ABS Adjunct Professor of Subsea Engineering Program) and the College of Technology (Mechanical Engineering Department). He teaches classes in thermo-fluid sciences, design of experiments, computational methods, and data science. Ed has taught at Clemson University and Texas A&M University, College Station.
Ed’s experiences/responsibilities involve the management of the Multi-Physics Simulations Group for GE Oil & Gas, FMC Technologies, and Landmark Graphics (Halliburton). In this capacity, Ed was responsible for leading several groups of engineering specialist responsible for performing thermal, mass diffusion, and multi-physics analyses on all major systems and sub-system components, development of thermal best practices for multi-physics analyses specific to each respective product. At Landmark, Ed was actively involved in Digital Twin development for upstream and production operations for Onshore & Offshore assets.
Ed holds the rank of ASME Fellow, AIAA Associate Fellow; is active in API and ASME technical committees (e.g., ASME Offshore Technology Conference OTC), served on several ASME committees (ASME South Texas Section and North-West Texas), and was an Associate-Editor for the ASME Journal on Transaction of Energy Resources Technology.

A certified public accountant with MBA and advanced degree in Corporate Finance, his career started as a Tax Analyst for Deloitte before moving to GE Capital where he had a progressive career through various financial and mergers & acquisitions roles. After that, he served as Executive Commercial Finance and Financial Planning leader for GE Global Growth Operations in Latin America. Prior to his current role, Santiago worked for GE Oil & Gas serving as Chief Financial Officer for Latin America, and subsequently as Global Chief Financial Officer for Downstream Technology Solutions.