Erhan Erkut received a BSc in Industrial Engineering from Boğaziçi University in 1980 and his PhD from the University of Florida in 1986. Prof. Erkut taught at the University of Alberta School of Business between 1985 and 2005. During this period, he received 10 education awards, including the "INFORMS Teaching of Management Science Practice Award", the "3M Teaching Fellowship", five practice and service awards given by the Canadian Operational Research Society, and published over 50 refereed journal articles. Managing many industrial projects alongside education and research, Prof. Erkut founded an applied research center called Center for Excellence in Operations and was the founding editor of INFORMS Transactions in Education magazine.

After returning to Turkey in 2005, Prof. Erkut served as the Dean of the Faculty of Business Administration at Bilkent University from 2005 to 2007 and as the founding Rector of Özyeğin University between 2008 and 2013. Since 2014, he has been a Vice Rector at MEF University. In recent years, Prof. Erkut has been actively promoting entrepreneurship and competence development in Turkey. With the support of the Mehmet Zorlu Foundation and MEF University, he has been supporting the professional development of thousands of high school and university students for the last seven years with the 21st Century Competencies training program (YetGen). Prof. Erkut is the author of the books "Üniversite Seçerken" ("When Choosing a University"), "İşte Ceylanlar" ("Here Are the Gazelles") and "Sistem Çaresiz Eğitim Sizde" ("The System Is in Ruins; Education Is in Your Hands").