Dr. Gökçin Çınar (pronounced goeck-chin chin-r ) is an Assistant Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan and the Director of the IDEAS Lab. She focuses on the design and optimization of complex systems, with an emphasis on future aircraft concepts and electrified propulsion. Her work combines physics-based and data-driven modeling, multidisciplinary design optimization, and systems engineering to develop computational methods for enhancing energy efficiency and performance in future flight concepts.

Download Curriculum Vitae here.

Dr. Çınar is the recipient of the 2025 AIAA Lawrence Sperry Award and the 2024 SARES Young Scientist Award. She has authored AIAA and IEEE best papers for her contributions to design space exploration and optimization of electrified aircraft.

Prior to her role at Michigan, Dr. Çınar worked as a Research Engineer at Georgia Institute of Technology where she oversaw government and industry-funded research projects on future aircraft technologies, electrified aircraft propulsion systems, thermal management, and model-based systems engineering.

Dr. Çınar holds Ph.D. and MSc. degrees in aerospace engineering from Georgia Tech, and a B.Sc. in aerospace engineering from Middle East Technical University. Her doctoral dissertation, “Methodology for Dynamic Sizing of Electric Power Generation and Distribution Architectures”, conducted in consultation with Prof. Dimitri Mavris, focused on developing a novel computational method for the design and optimization of electrified aircraft across diverse propulsion architectures. As part of this work, she developed Electrified Propulsion Architecture Sizing and Synthesis (E-PASS), one of the first software tools in the literature to enable integrated optimization of design, mission trajectory, and power and energy management for hybrid-electric aircraft. E-PASS has supported early research projects in electrified aircraft propulsion, contributing to projects funded by NASA, AFRL, and Boeing.

Dr. Çınar is a senior member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), and a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). She is the Chair of AIAA’s Electrified Aircraft Technology Technical Committee, and has been serving in the Organizing Committee for the AIAA/IEEE Electric Aircraft Technologies Symposium (EATS) since 2019.