Dr. Bayraktar completed her Ph.D. degree in economics at the University of Maryland – College Park in 2002. She joined Penn State Harrisburg in the fall of 2003. Before joining Penn State Harrisburg, she was working at the World Bank as an economist. Her basic research interest is on development economics, specializing on Sub-Saharan African countries. She focuses on the fixed investment behavior of countries and firms, its determinants as well as its impacts on economic development. Particularly, she studies the effects of investments in education, health, and infrastructure. She also works on problems related to public finance, inflation, poverty, banking sector, and financial markets in developing as well as advanced economies. Additionally, she is expert in the areas of applied economics, econometrics, and data analytics. Based on her research interests in Sub-Saharan African countries in different areas of economics, she has been a member of WEF Nexus in Africa Initiative since 2018.