Leading Academic Team
Dr. Luciano Batista
Luciano Batista is Senior Lecturer in Operations Management at Aston Business School, where he is a member of the Operations and Information Systems Department. He contributes to the Low Carbon Management group developing the ‘Low Carbon SMEs’ project funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Luciano is a Chartered Member of the Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT) in the UK since 2015, where he also sits at the Management Board for the institute’s Logistics Research Network. His research is centred on sustainable operations and supply chains applied to the circular economy. In this area Luciano has edited two Special Issues: ‘Supply Chain Operations for a Circular Economy’ and ‘From Linear to Circular Manufacturing Business Models’.
Luciano also organised and led Special Research Tracks focusing on circular supply chains and the role of digital technologies in the circular economy for EurOMA 2016 and 2018 conferences. He developed a conceptual framework for a Circular Supply Chain Archetype which takes into account industrial symbiosis aspects to map material exchanges advocated by the circular economy. The model was applied in an international comparative study of packaging recovery ecosystems implemented by Tetra Pak in China and Brazil. Luciano secured research fund for several projects on business model innovations involving industrial synergies for the circular economy.
Prof. Roger Maull
Roger Maull is Professor of Management Systems at the University of Exeter. His specialist areas are management systems and digital economy. He is Academic Director of INDEX (Initiative for Digital Economy at Exeter), a research centre that investigates emerging business models, digital platforms and ledger technologies. The remit of INDEX research group is to explore economic, behavioural and organisational changes brought about by technological developments of the digital economy.
Roger’s current research is into the impact of digital technologies on future economic activity including, IoT, personal data, wearables and crypto currencies. He was lead investigator on RCUK’s NEMODE (£1.5m) Network+. He is currently PI on the DEAS Network+ and CI on the IoFT Network+ for the DE theme. Roger is also a member of the executive group of the Connected Everything Network+.
Dr. Mukesh Kumar
Mukesh Kumar is University Lecturer at the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge. MK leads research in the field of industrial resilience and sustainability at the Institute of Manufacturing (IfM), where he is the Head of Industrial Resilience Research Group. In this area, Mukesh has secured and managed research grants to develop projects involving risk management, plant location, technology selection and investment decisions by manufacturing companies. He extended his work on risk, resilience and sustainability by exploring ‘climate change implications for global food supply chains’ through collaboration between IfM, Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research, and the British Antarctic Survey. Since then his research has included environment sustainability assessment of global supply networks in four sectors: food, pharmaceuticals, automotive and aerospace.
Prof. Andrea Zisman
Andrea Zisman is Professor of Computing at the Open University with expertise in the areas of software and service engineering. Her research interests are in adaptation of software systems; traceability of software artefacts and food supply chain; secure software engineering; service engineering, incorporating discovery, adaptation, composition, verification, reputation and trust of services; cloud computing; IoT-based systems and its applications to food security; and interoperability of distributed heterogeneous database systems. Andrea has been principal and co-investigator in various EPSRC, European, and industry funded research projects, including the recent EPSRC The Internet of Food Things DE Network+ project, and the EPSRC SAUSE project (Secure, Adaptive, Usable Software Engineering Platform Grant). She also holds a Parnas Fellowship from the Irish Software Research Centre (Lero). Andrea's multi-disciplinary research group, The Software Engineering & Design (SEAD) at the Open University is leading in software engineering research promoting a paradigm shift in the way software is developed and used.
Dr. Theoni Georgiou
Theoni Georgiou is Reader in Materials Chemistry at the Imperial College London and an expert in fabricating polymer-based materials. She is an active polymer scientist involved in many national and international committees. Theoni is an elected committee member of the Materials Chemistry Division (MCD) council of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). She is also a member of the MacroGroup UK committee (the UK polymer chemists’ association linked to the RSC and Society of Chemical Industry), which she has been chairing since July 2019. Theoni also represents the MacroGroup UK at the European Polymer Federation committee. Theoni is currently a co-investigator of the EPSRC funded project ‘Creative Circular Economy Approaches to Eliminate Plastic Waste’. At the Imperial College, she leads a group of several PhD students and postdoctoral fellows. Theoni has published more than 50 peer-reviewed publications in the area. She is also a member of the advisory editorial board of the European Polymer Journal and the Polymer Chemistry journal.