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Seminar Series

Seminar Series

The CN Supply Chain Management Distinguished Speaker Series hosts speakers from a variety of backgrounds. If you would like to receive an email invitation to future speaker events, please contact Hamid Noori hnoori@wlu.ca.

Upcoming Seminars and Events: Fall 2026

Dr. Mehmet Gumus, McGill Desautels

Date and time: Friday, October 30, 2026 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.
Location: Lazaridis Hall, Pollock Boardroom (LH4114)
Title: How to (and How Not to) Increase Free-Shipping Thresholds: Evidence from Online Retail
Dr. Mehmet Gumus Institutional Profile

Dr. Saed Alizamir, Darden School of Business (at the University of Virginia)

Date and time: Friday, November 27, 2026 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.
Location: Lazaridis Hall, LH4096
Title: TBD
Dr. Saed Alizamir Institutional Profile

Kaveh Vafaei, Managing Director of Precision Resource

Date and time: Tuesday, December 15, 2026 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.
Location: TBD
Title: TBD
Profile: Mr. Kaveh Vafaei, Managing Director of Precision Resource, will join us for two upcoming engagements with our Centre. Precision Resource (www.PrecisionResource.com) is a global manufacturing leader with nine production facilities across North America, Europe, and China.
He holds an engineering degree from École Polytechnique de Montréal and an MBA from the Ivey Business School. His extensive global leadership experience and international manufacturing background will bring a vital industry perspective to our discussions and initiatives.

Past Seminars and Events

Dr. Masha Shunko, Foster School of Business (at the University of Washington at Seattle)

Date and time: Friday, Sept 18, 2026 from 10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.
Title: Scaling Peer-to-Peer Food Sharing: Commerical Entry and the Incumbent Channel

Dr. Amir Hejazi, Director, Data Science and Forecasting, Cozey Inc.

Date and time: Friday, May 1, 2026 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: Demand Planning for Configurable Modular Products in Direct-to-Consumer Retail: A Case Study from Cozey

Dr. Mathieu Dahan, H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology

Date and time: Friday, Apr. 10, 2026 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: Decision Analytics for Emergency Logistics and Security Operations

Dr. Yanfeng Ouyang, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, The Grainger College of Engineering, The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Date and time: Friday, Apr. 17, 2026 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: Reliable Supply Chain Network Design against Probabilistic Disruptions and Last-Mile Congestion

Dr. Tim Huh, Sauder School of Business, University British Columbia

Date and time: Friday, Feb. 6, 2026 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: Two-Sided Pricing and Learning with Buyer Choice: A Generalized SGD Method

Dr. Nicola Secomandi, School of Business, Rice University

Date and time: Friday, Feb. 20, 2026 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: Conditional Quadratic Hedging of Futures Term Structure Risk in Merchant Energy Trading Operations

Dr. Fernando Bernstein, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University

Date and time: Friday, Jan. 16, 2026 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: Data-Driven Population Tracking in Service Systems

Dr. Mark E. Lewis, School of Operations Research and Information Engineering, Cornell University

Date and time: Friday Dec. 12, 2025 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: A stochastic model for when to invoke telemedicine visits in a MinuteClinic

Dr. Kai Huang, The DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University

Date and time: Friday Dec. 5, 2025 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: To Box or Not to Box: Packaging Decisions in Humanitarian Relief Operations

Dr. Chris Parker, The Darden School of Business, University of Virginia

Date and time: Friday Nov. 21, 2025 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: Life's a glitch: the behavioural cost of system failures and the case for operational transparency

Dr. Ginger Y. Ke, Faculty of Business Administration, Memorial University

Date and time: Friday Nov. 14, 2025 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: Reliable and robust emergency management for hazardous materials

Dr. Vikram Bhakoo, Department of Management and Marketing, University of Melbourne

Date and time: Wednesday Oct. 15, 2025 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: Qualitative Research in OSCM: A stock take and how to harness the potential of interpretive case study research

Date and time: Friday Oct. 17, 2025 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: Unpacking the wicked problem of modern slavery in supply chains: Challenges, Antidotes and stimulating ideas for future scholarship!

Dr. Janos D. Pinter, Department of Management Science and Information Systems, Rutgers Business School – New Brunswick, Rutgers University

Date and time: Friday May 16, 2025 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: Optimized Object Packings with Applications

Dr. Baris Ata, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago

Date and time: Friday May 9, 2025 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: Analysis and Improvement of Eviction Enforcement

Dr. Gene M. Grossman, Princeton University

Date and time: Friday May 2, 2025 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: Optimal Supply Chain Resilience

Dr. Gokce Esenduran, Daniels School of Business, Purdue University

Date and time: Friday Apr. 11, 2025 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: Manufacturing-as-a-Service: Bringing Job Opportunities to Underserved Rural Communities

Dr. M. Ali. Ulku, Dalhousie University

Date and time: Friday Feb. 14, 2025 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: On Retailer Return Policies, Consumer Behaviour, and Supply Chain Sustainability

Dr. Moravid Rahmani, Scheller College of Business, Georgia Institute of Technology

Date and time: Friday Feb. 7, 2025 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: Sequential Selection of Candidates: An Experimental Investigation

Dr. Stephen Leider, University of Michigan

Date and time: Friday Jan. 24, 2025 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: Human Decision-Making in Dynamic Resource Allocation

Dr. George Day, Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania

Date and time: Friday Dec. 13, 2024 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: The Innovation Disciplines of Growth Leaders

Dr. Ioannis Stamatopoulos, McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin University of Texas at Austin

Date and time: Friday Dec. 6, 2024 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: Observational Price Variation in Scanner Data Cannot Reproduce Experimental Price Elasticities

Dr. Kevin Shang, Duke University

Date and time: Friday Nov. 8 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: Dynamic Pricing and Release Time Control for Service Systems

Dr. Qiong Wang, Department of Industrial & Enterprise Systems Engineering, Grainger College of Engineering, The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Date and time: Friday Nov. 1, 2024 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: Exploiting Random Lead Times for Significant Savings of Inventory Costs: Policies, Analyses, and Results

Dr. Manpreet Singh Hora, Scheller College of Business, Georgia Institute of Technology

Date and time: June 23, 2023 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: Buyer-Supplier Networks and Innovation: The Role of Technological Distance

Dr. Dan Iancu, Stanford Graduate School of Business

Date and time: April 28, 2023 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: Conditional Incentives for Improving Smallholder Farmer Welfare and Protecting Tropical Forests

Dr. Jeannette Song, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University

Date and time: February 24, 2023 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: The Blockchain Newsvendor: Value of Freshness Transparency and Smart Contracts

Dr. Song-Hee Kim, SNU Business School, Seoul National University

Date and time: February 3, 2023 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: Identifying the Bottleneck Unit: Impact of Congestion Spillover in Hospital Inpatient Unit Network

Dr. Felipe Caro, Anderson School of Management, University of California at Los Angeles

Date and time: January 20, 2023 from 11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Title: Believing in Analytics: Managers’ Adherence to Price Recommendations from a DSS (joint work with Anna Saez de Tejada Cuenca)

Dr. Ou Tang, Linköping University

Date and time: January 13, 2023 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: Planned Lead times in an Automotive MTO Remanufacturing Case

Dr. Fabio Sgarbossa, Norwegian Institute of Science and Technology

Date and time: December 16, 2022 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: Renewable hydrogen supply chains: A planning matrix and an agenda for future research

Dr. Niels Agatz, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University

Date and time: December 9, 2022 from 9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.
Title: Time Slot Management for Attended Home Delivery

Dr. Terry Taylor, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley

Date and time: December 2, 2022 from 11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Title: Shared-ride Efficiency of Ride-hailing Platforms

Dr. Robert L. Bray, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

Date and time: November 25, 2022 from 10:00 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.
Title: Logarithmic Regret in Multisecretary and Online Linear Programming Problems with Continuous Valuations

Dr. Linwei Xin, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago

Date and time: November 18, 2022 from 11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Title: The Benefits of Delay to Online Decision-Making

Dr. Adam Elmachtoub, Columbia University

Date and time: November 11, 2022 from 11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Title: Simple and Fair Pricing Strategies

Dr. Joel Goh, National University of Singapore Business School

Date and time: May 6, 2022 from 9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.
Title: Human performance at solving 0-1 knapsack problems: Results from a large-scale field experiment

Dr. Christopher S. Tang, UCLA Anderson School of Management in Los Angeles

Date and time: April 29, 2022 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Title: Improving Supply Chain Resilience: Looking Back and Looking Forward

Dr. Anyan Qi, University of Texas at Dallas’ Naveen Jindal School of Management

Date and time: April 8, 2022 from 9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.
Title: An Asymptotically Tight Learning Algorithm for Mobile-Promotion Platforms (with Zhichao Feng, Milind Dawande, and Ganesh Janakiraman)

Dr. Onur Boyabatli, Singapore Management University’s Lee Kong Chian School of Business

Date and time: April 1, 2022 from 9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.
Title: Stochastic Capacity Investment in the Presence of Production Resource Uncertainty and Its Implications for Hedging

Dr. Stephen Shum, City University of Hong Kong's College of Business

Date and time: March 25, 2022 from 9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.
Title: Dynamic Operations Management with Strategic Customers

Dr. Javad Nasiry, McGill University, Desautels Faculty of Management

Date and time: February 11, 2022 from 10:30 a.m. - 12 p.m.
Title: Sustainability in the Fast Fashion Industry (joint work with Xiaoyang Long)

Dr. Qing Li, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Business School

Date and time: February 4, 2022 from 9 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.
Title: A Sequential Model for Recruitment: High Volume, Random Yields, and Rigid Target

Dr. Warren B. Powell, Professor Emeritus at Princeton University and co-founder and Chief Analytics Officer at Optimal Dynamics

Date and time: January 7, 2022 from 10 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.
Title: A Unified Framework for Sequential Decisions under Uncertainty

Dr. Amar Sapra, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, India.

Date and time: December 17, 2021 from 9 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.
Title: Optimal Processing and Trading for a Commodity in the Presence of Inventory Conversion Flexibility and Random Supply (with Sridhar Seshadri and Trilochan Sastry)

Dr. Nursen Aydin, Associate Professor of Operational Research at the Warwick Business School in the UK.

Date and time: December 3, 2021 from 10 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.
Title: Fundamental Models in Revenue Management: Past, Present and Future

Dr. Chaithanya Bandi, Associate Professor of Operations at the NUS Business School in Singapore

Date and time: November 19, 2021 from 9 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.
Title: Optimal Staffing and Online Scheduling in data-rich but uncertain environments: A case study at PGIMER hospital

Krishnan Venkateswaran, Chief Digital and Information Officer, Titan Company Ltd.
Yashwanth Kumar, Head- Analytics and Insights, Titan Company Ltd.
Archana Menon, Gautam Prasad, Goverdhana Kudligi, and Santosh Vuppala, leading analytics delivery teams for various functions at Titan Company Ltd.

Date and time: October 22, 2021 from 9 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.
Title: Analytics Applications at Titan

Dr. Rob Zuidwijk, Professor of Global Supply Chains and Ports at the Rotterdam School of Management in the Netherlands.

Date and time: September 17, 2021 from 9 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.
Title: The role of data in container transportation

Dr. Peter M. Kort, economist and operations researcher at the Tilburg School of Economics and Management in the Netherlands

Date and time: June 25, 2021 from 9 a.m. – 10:30 a.m
Title: Double Marginalization due to External Financing: Capacity Investment under Uncertainty (by Herbert Dawid, Nick F.D. Huberts, Kuno J.M. Huisman, Peter M. Kort, and Xingang Wen)

Dr. Jiahua Wu, Imperial College Business School, London

Date and time: June 18, 2021 from 11 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Title: Sales Effort Management under All-or-Nothing Constraint

Dr. Tava Olsen, The University of Auckland Business School

Date and time: June 4, 2021 from 3:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Title: Modelling Contracts and Incentives in Agricultural Cooperative Supply Chains

Dr. Houyuan Jiang and Dr. Feryal Erhun. Dr. Jiang and Dr. Erhun are faculty members at the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge

Date and time: May 28, 2021 from 11 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Title: Supply Chain Thinking in Healthcare and an Application on COVID-19

Dr. Rachel Q. Zhang, Chair Professor of the Department of Industrial Engineering and Decision Analytics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Date and time: May 21, 2021 from 9 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.
Title: An Economic Model of Blockchain: The Interplay between Transaction Fees and Security

Dr. Yun Fong Lim, faculty member at the Lee Kong Chian School of Business, Singapore Management University.

Date and time: May 14, 2021 from 9 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.
Title: Optimal Policies and Heuristics to Match Supply with Demand for Online Retailing

Dr. Tolga Tezcan, faculty member at the London Business School

Date and time: May 7, 2021 from 11 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Title: Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program does not provide the right incentives: Issues and remedies

Dr. Lucy Gongtao Chen, faculty member at the National University of Singapore's business school.

Date and time: April 30, 2021 from 10:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Title: Supply Chain Performance with Target-Oriented Firms

Dr. Debjit Roy, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad

Date and time: April 23, 2021 from 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Title: Robots, Models, and Data: New Research Opportunities in E-Commerce Order Fulfillment