Leaders in research, innovation and engagement

Cardiff Business School’s Logistics and Operations Management (LOM) annual internal conference got underway with a series of awards for leadership in research, innovation and engagement.

The annual event, hosted virtually this year, brings together research and practitioner experts from across the School’s LOM section to share and debate research progress amongst LOM colleagues.

The LOM Leaders Research Award honours went to three co-winners, this year:

• Dr Yingli Wang, Reader in Logistics and Operations Management
• Dr Daniel Eyers, Senior Lecturer in Manufacturing Systems Management
• Dr Jane Lynch, Reader in Procurement

Dr Wang was recognised for her role leading and convening consortia to bid for a number of research contracts resulting in a sequence of contract awards where she will be the Principal Investigator including with the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Innovate UK and UK Government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sports.

Over the last 18 months these equated to successful external funding of over £4m(total project value) with her share equating in excess of £1m.

In addition, Dr Wang has co-authored a range of high-quality research papers and overseen the second edition of her book on e-Logistics, and a new book entitled “Digital supply chain transformation: leveraging emerging technologies for sustainable growth” with LOM colleague Professor Stephen Pettit.

Dr Eyers received the award for his involvement as co-investigator or Principal Investigator in awards equating to £930,000 over the last 18 months. Notably the Re-maker Space project, which he is co-investigator on, will take up a ground floor position on Cardiff University’s new Social Science Research Park when it opens later this year.

In addition, he has co-authored a raft of published high quality research papers, managed a number of Knowledge Transfer Partnerships and has led over 1000 students on LOM’s dissertation and live projects programme over the last seven years.

Although on a Teaching and Scholarship career pathway, Dr Lynchwas recognised for her leading role convening and participating in a range of research projects connected to her area of interest – procurement.

Over the last year, she led the bid and the design for the Innovation of Future Public Services (£2.4m) project with project delivery commencing in May 2021. Dr Lynch is also leading a research collaboration on embedding social value into procurement for the New Velindre Cancer Centre (nVCC). She is setting up a new research group for the LOM section - Sustainable and Responsible Supply Chain Forum (SRSCF) and has had success in journal publication, too.

Dr Bahman Rostami-Tabar completed the award ceremony picking up the LOM Leaders Innovation and Engagement Award.

Dr Rostami-Tabar was recognised for his pioneering concept of Forecasting for Social Good (FSG) and engaging with a wide range of beneficiaries through various formats, including:

• creating a FSG Research Grant for researchers in lower income countries
• creating an online global Forecasting Book Club
• running a workshop for healthcare managers on “embracing uncertainty in healthcare: using probabilistic forecasting and planning”
• creating a Democratising Forecasting project (which has trained 119 forecasters in 9 countries)
• training 95 healthcare professionals across the NHS in the use of ‘R’.

He has also had success in publishing a range of high-quality research papers over the last year and won funding of over £50,000 notably on Barriers and Enablers in Healthcare and Epidemic Forecasting in Africa.

Finally, he has been invited to be a scientific advisor for United States Agency for International Development on using forecasting models for more effective global health supply chains.

Find out more about Cardiff Business School’s Logistics and Operations Management Section.