Banu Lokman is a Professor of Operational Research (OR) and Associate Head of Research and Innovation at the School of Organisations, Systems and People. Between 2011-2024, she also served as the Deputy Director of CORL (the Centre for Operational Research and Logistics) at Portsmouth. Banu's expertise is in the field of OR, multi-criteria decision making and optimization where she has published in various high-ranking journals. In 2022, she was given the Bernard Roy Award of the Association of European Operational Research Societies Working Group on Multiple Criteria Decision Aiding. This is a recognition conferred to a young researcher for an outstanding contribution to the Multiple Criteria Decision Aiding Field.

Banu has been an active researcher, contributing to international societies and professional bodies. She served as the secretary of the International branch of the Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) Society and a board member at INFORMS (The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) Section on MCDM. In 2022, she organised the International MCDM conference at the University of Portsmouth.  In 2023, she was elected as the President-elect and Vice-President of the INFORMS Section on MCDM. She holds Associate Editor roles at OMEGA (The International Journal of Management Science) and IMA Journal of Management Mathematics. She also leads and delivers the NATCOR Courses on MCDM, one of the UK-based taught courses for PhD students. 

Banu joined the University of Portsmouth in January 2019 having completed an Undergraduate degree in Industrial Engineering (IE), followed by a Masters degree (2007) and a PhD (2011) from the Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara (Turkey). After her post-doc research at Aalto University School of Business (Finland), she was appointed as an Assistant Professor at the IE department at METU from 2014 to 2019, in between holding the post of Visiting Researcher at Aalto University. Banu has taught across variety of modules including OR, MCDM, decision analysis, operations management, logistics, supply chain management, multi-objective combinatorial optimisation, engineering economics, probability theory and calculus. 

Banu's current research focuses on healthcare and sustainability applications of OR and MCDM. She leads a PhD project, in collaboration with Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust; aiming to optimise prostate biopsy decisions.