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Merve Akbas, PhD
Data Scientist and Behavioral Economist
Merve Akbas, PhD, is a Quantitative UX Researcher at Google, specializing in behavioral economics and data science. She has been with Google since November 2019, initially working for Google Ads before transitioning to her current role in Google Search in July 2022.
Education and Background
Merve earned her PhD from Duke University, where she conducted primary and applied research on consumer behavior in Dan Ariely's Behavioral Economics Lab. Her experience includes roles as a Data Scientist at Jet.com and a Behavioral Economist at Aliya Financial Technologies, where she conducted both qualitative and quantitative UX research.
Skills and Contributions
Merve is proficient in tools such as SQL, BigQuery, R, and Python, and has extensive experience in designing experiments, statistical modeling, and mentoring junior researchers. Her work often involves collaborating with product teams to develop hypotheses and measure the impact of various initiatives through rigorous A/B testing.
Languages
She is fluent in English and Turkish, with limited proficiency in German.1
