Elif Kongar was born in Ankara, Turkey, in December 1974. She received her BS degree from the Industrial Engineering Department of Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey, in June 1995. In June 1997, she received her MS degree in Industrial Engineering from the same university where, she was awarded full scholarship for graduate studies in the USA. She started the graduate program in Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA in September 1998 and obtained her Ph.D. degree in June 2003. She has been a research associate in the Laboratory for Responsible Manufacturing (LRM) at Northeastern University since September 1999. She has also been employed as an Assistant Professor by Yildiz Technical University till February 2006. She is currently an Assistant Professor  at the University of Bridgeport, Departments of Technology Management and Mechanical Engineering. She is also a Part-Time Research Fellow at the Center for Industrial Ecology at Yale University.

Dr. Kongar is currently an Assistant Professor at Bridgeport University and a Visiting Researcher in the Center for Industrial Ecology at Yale University. Her research interests include the areas of supply chain management, logistics, environmentally conscious manufacturing, product recovery, disassembly systems, production planning and scheduling and multiple criteria decision making. She has co-authored several technical papers presented at various national and international conferences and published in their respective proceedings. She is a member of the Scientific Research Society, Sigma Xi, the Industrial Engineering Honor Society, Alpha Pi Mu, the Phi Beta Delta Honor Society and the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society.