Sunduz is a native of Turkey, where she moved from her hometown of Izmit to Ankara to study Industrial Engineering at Bilkent University, from 1994 to 1998. After joining the UC Berkeley graduate program in Biostatistics, she earned her MA in Biostatistics in May 2000, and began her doctoral studies under the supervision Mark van der Laan.

Sunduz's research interests are broadly computational biology and analysis of complex missing data structures. For more information about her research, visit her personal site.