Özyeğin University, Çekmeköy Campus Nişantepe District, Orman Street, 34794 Çekmeköy - İSTANBUL
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Jan 17, 2014
Associate Prof. Ekrem Duman’s “Migrating Birds Optimization Algorithm” Staves Off Credit Card Frauds
The Migrating Birds Optimization (MBO) Algorithm developed by a team led by Associate Prof. Ekrem Duman, our Industrial Engineering faculty member, staves off credit card frauds. A leading bank in Turkey has already achieved 97% of success in fraud prevention using the Migrating Birds Optimization Algorithm.
The MBO article written by Associate Prof. Ekrem Duman and his team was issued in the international journal of “Information Sciences” and ranked among the top 10 articles downloaded from the journal.
Migrating Birds Gave an Inspiration
Back in 2008, Associate Prof. Ekrem Duman was reading a scientific article when he could not help but notice the V flight formation of migrating birds, which led him start thinking how they managed energy optimization so well especially during long distance flights. “Can’t we solve challenging problems with an inspiration from them?” he pondered. Duman later shared this idea with Prof. Mithat Uysal and together with Ali Fuat Alkaya, their Ph.D. student back then, they brought the idea to maturity.
As known, migrating birds fly in a V formation, which not only allows them see each other better but also ensures energy efficiency. So much that, 25 birds flying in a V formation can fly as much as 70% further than a solo bird. The team made up of Associate Prof. Ekrem Duman, Prof. Dr. Mitat Uysal from Doğuş University, and Assistant Prof. Ali Fuat Alkaya from Marmara University have thus developed the Migrating Bird Optimization (MBO) algorithm with the inspiration from their intricate mechanism for energy efficiency and mutual utilization, and published their findings as a scientific article in the international journal of Information Sciences in 2012. The article has ranked among the top 10 articles downloaded from the journal although it was published towards the end of the year.
The MBO algorithm is designed as “problem-independent” and can be used for many challenging problems
MBO was initially applied to solve a layout problem. Later the algorithm was used to identify credit card frauds, which is a nightmare for both banks and credit card users, and garnered outstanding success. So much that, a leading Turkish bank which implemented the MBO algorithm in its headquarter succeeded to stave off 97% of potential/existing fraud cases with their new fraud detection method.
Award-Magnate Idea
The Turkish bank which implemented the MBO solution received the European Banking Platform’s Innovation Award 2013 during a conference on Customer Safety and Mobile Banking.Furthermore, another article prepared about the application by Associate Prof. Ekrem Duman in collaboration with Ayşe Büyükkaya and İlker Eliküçük also received the best data mining application award during ICDM (International Conference on Data Mining) organized under the auspices of IEEE in Dallas, US in December 2013.