News

The EURO Working Group on Sustainable Supply Chains is announcing the call for nominations for the Jacqueline Bloemhof PhD Thesis Award on Sustainable Supply Chains 2023. The PhD thesis should predominantly focus on applications of operational research techniques in the field of sustainable supply chains. The thesis must have been examined and approved by a European university between January 1, 2021 and December 31, 2022.

Application: Candidates must apply via email to the EURO Working Group on Sustainable Supply Chains (SustainableSC@om.rwth-aachen.de) by the deadline of the competition (February 28, 2023) containing the following information:

• An executive summary of the PhD thesis highlighting the relevance of the work for the topics of the EWG-SustSC of not more than 1,000 words,
• an electronic copy of the PhD Thesis,
• a letter from their main PhD supervisor recommending the candidate for consideration for this award and confirming that the candidate meets the criteria for eligibility for the competition, and
• a certificate of the university confirming the final approval of the thesis.

Deadlines:

Examination and acceptance of PhD thesis to apply for the award: Between January 1, 2021 and December 31, 2022

Application deadline: February 28, 2023

Notification of the decision of the award committee: On or before April 30, 2023

Award Committee: The Board of the EWG on Sustainable Supply Chains decides the winner based on a recommendation by the PhD Thesis Award Committee. This decision cannot be challenged.

WISDOM (Women in Society: Doing Operational Research and Management Science) is a forum within the EURO (The Association of European Operational Research Societies) that aims to support, empower, and encourage the participation of all genders in Operations Research and Management Science (shortly OR). One of the goals of WISDOM is to promote championing, networking, and mentoring, particularly of women at the early stages of their careers in OR.

In light of this goal, WISDOM would like to bring your attention to the 2022 call of the initiative YoungWomen4OR. This initiative aims to introduce to our community emerging young women working in OR, either in academia or in the industry. The WISDOM Forum will promote selected individuals by spotlighting their work through EURO channels and providing networking and mentoring opportunities. All young women working in OR are strongly encouraged to participate.

Eligibility:

• Early career female researchers/practitioners (at most 3 years after Ph.D.) or Ph.D. students in their last year of study in the field of OR.
• Member of a EURO national association.

Program Details and Benefits:

• WISDOM will select 12 individuals each year in order to advocate for them by publishing their research profile on the WISDOM webpage and through EURO social media.
• Selected individuals will be invited to present their work or research proposals at the EURO-k Conference in the YoungWomen4OR Stream.
• Opportunities to meet with WISDOM members and other senior researchers within EURO will be created.

Selection: The selection process will take into account the information provided in the application including the future project plans of the candidates. As far as possible, a fair representation of all the countries within the EURO association will be pursued. Selected candidates will be informed at the beginning of December 2022.

Jury: The Selection Jury consists of the following WISDOM members: Ana Barbosa-Povoa (Portugal), Renata Mansini (Italy), and Sibel Salman (Turkey).

Application deadlines: The opening for the candidates’ application submission will be October 28, 2022. Candidates are invited to fill out the application form by November 18, 2022.

Contact: For further information, please send an e-mail to YoungWomen4OR@euro-online.org.

NATCOR, a National Taught Course Centre in Operational Research, delivers taught courses to PhD students, from across Europe, on a number of different topics in OR.

EURO is advertising a competition for bursaries for courses run in 2023. These include:

• Forecasting & Predictive Analytics – Lancaster University, January
• Stochastic Modelling – Lancaster University, April
• Simulation – University of Southampton, July
• Combinatorial Optimisation – University of Southampton, September

The NATCOR course fees and accommodation (if applicable) will be funded by EURO for successful candidates.

Typically, accommodation for any residential courses will be four nights bed and breakfast. If additional accommodation is required, candidates will need to arrange and pay for this. Also any extra costs incurred will need to be settled personally.

Please also be reminded that successful candidates requiring visas will need to apply for these in good time.

Eligibility: Applicants must be PhD students, from one of the EURO member countries or studying in one of the EURO member countries. Applicants must have good English Language skills as all NATCOR courses will be in English. Preference will be given to students in their first or second years but all are welcome to apply. Preference will also be given to applicants who have not previously received support from EURO for NATCOR or other PhD schools.

Application: To apply for a bursary, candidates from a EURO member society country, or studying in a EURO member society country, should submit a zip file containing the application form, their curriculum vitae (including their academic track record), a letter outlining their motivation to attend, and a letter of recommendation from their supervisor.  Applicants should declare on their application if they are receiving any additional support from their PhD funding body or other sponsor.

Selection Process: The EURO VP2 selects and ranks (in the case of more than one accepted from the same country) the candidates. When accepting the candidates, the VP2 should aim at a good distribution of the participants among the EURO member societies.

Current Call – Important Dates: Submit documents (see above) to https://www.euro-online.org/awards/natcor2023/registration.php.

Deadline for applications: December 20, 2022

Notification of acceptance: January 15, 2023

A joint work between Dr. Athanasios Rentizelas (National Technical University of Athens), Dr. Andrea Tuni (Politechnico di Torino), Dr. Helio Fuchigami (UFSCar), Dr. Maico Roris Severino (UFG), and Luisa Queiroz Barbosa has won the 'Prize for OR for the common good' from EURO - The Association of European Operational Research Societies, during the EURO 2022 conference in Finland. The research behind the award, involving Decision Support Systems to support participation of vulnerable Brazilian farmers in institutional markets, is published in the European Journal of Operational Research and can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2021.02.047. The work is based on the BRASCO research project.

At the 2022 EURO conference in Espoo, Finland, our working group again organized a sustainable supply chains stream, with sessions spanning over several days. These sessions covered relevant and interesting issues related to the following topics:

• Circular and Bio-Based Economy
• Climate Resilience in Supply Chain Planning
• Closed Loop Supply Chains
• AI and Blockchain in Sustainable Supply Chains
• Sustainable Food & Retail Supply Chains
• Social Factors in Sustainable Supply Chains
• Coordination and Contracting in Sustainable Supply Chains
• Multi-criteria methods in sustainable supply chains

As a further highlight, we organized a keynote. Grit Walther gave a brilliant talk about interdisciplinary perspectives on the transformation of our energy, industrial, and mobility systems.

Thank you to all the people in our community that contributed with presentations to these sessions!

The EWG on Sustainable Supply Chains has organized eight sessions for the EURO 2022 conference. The schedule for these sessions is as follows:

• MA-22: Circular and Bio-Based Economy, Monday, 08:30-10:00, Room Y229c.
• MB-22: Climate Resilience in Supply Chain Planning, Monday, 10:30-12:00, Room Y229c.
• MC-22: Closed Loop Supply Chains, Monday, 12:30-14:00, Room Y229c.
• MD-22: AI and Blockchain in Sustainable Supply Chains, Monday, 14:30-15:00, Room Y229c.
• TA-22: Sustainable Food & Retail Supply Chains, Tuesday, 08:30-10:00, Room Y229c.
• TB-22: Social Factors in Sustainable Supply Chains, Tuesday, 10:30-12:00, Room Y229c.
• TC-22: Coordination and Contracting in Sustainable Supply Chains, Tuesday, 12:30-14:00, Room Y229c.
• TD-22 Multi-Criteria Methods in Sustainable Supply Chains, Tuesday, 14:30-16:00, Room Y229c.

The complete conference program can be found on the conference website.

We are looking forward to seeing you in Helsinki and hope you will be joining our sessions.

To promote a high-quality scientific program at the 32nd EURO conference to be held at Aalto University, ​Finland on July 3–6, 2022, we are organizing a stream on Sustainable Supply Chains. We would be happy to see many presentations from the members of the EWG within our stream.

Within this stream, we seek contributions to cover recent advances on the following topics (among others):

• Sustainable supply chains
• Bio-based supply chains
• Sustainable transportation systems
• Closed-loop supply chains
• Food supply chains
• Multi-objective optimization for sustainability
• Interdisciplinary approaches for sustainability
• Resource-efficient manufacturing
• Operational challenges in the circular economy
• Design, planning and operation of ecosystems
• Sustainable logistics

Please participate actively by submitting an abstract (max. 1500 characters, including spaces) of your talk via the submission system using the following invitation code: 95f4caaa. Feel free to also invite potentially interested colleagues or students to submit their work.

The submission deadline is March 4, 2022.

We hope to be able to organize many interesting sessions on specific topics based on the abstract submissions. If you are however interested in organizing a special session yourself (consisting of up to 4 presentations) within our Sustainable Supply Chain stream, please contact Renzo Akkerman (renzo.akkerman@wur.nl).

EURO has created several prizes to acknowledge outstanding activities in the development or application of OR, amongst others:

• The EURO Prize for OR for the Common Good shall honor outstanding accomplishments of OR for solving social-oriented problems. The Call and Guidelines can be found on the EURO web pages.
• The EURO Doctoral Dissertation Award recognizes the OR contributions of PhD students or scientists having less than two years research experience since completing a PhD. The Call and Guidelines can be found on the EURO web pages.
• The EURO Excellence in Practice Award shall honor outstanding accomplishments in the practice of OR. The Call and Guidelines can be found on the EURO web pages.

For all prizes, the deadline for submitting material online is January 31, 2022.