From Fossil Resources to Biomass: A Business and Economics Perspective

Arnout Fischer

Associate Professor in Consumer Behaviour

Wageningen University & Research

Dr. ir. ARH Fischer is an Associate Professor in Consumer Behaviour. His research focusses on consumer behaviour in relation to new technologies and innovative products in food. By using insights from attitude theories in social psychology he aims to understand how existing knowledge about (in)directly related products, emotions and cognitions contribute to attitudes towards innovations in food and agriculture.

General research topic: consumer behaviour in relation to new technologies and innovative products in food.

Theoretical approach: By using insights from attitude theories in social psychology he aims to understand how existing knowledge about (in)directly related products, emotions and cognitions contribute to attitudes towards innovations in food and agriculture.

Current research: Consumer response to new technologies in food and food production applied to topics like nanotechnology in food, the use of insect protein for human consumption, consumption of algae, cultured meat, personalisation of nutrition, high-tech agriculture, e-commerce and ubiquitous computing.

Emiel Wubben

Associate Professor in Strategic Management

Wageningen University & Research

Dr Emiel F.M. Wubben is Associate Professor Strategic Management at Wageningen University, and Research Fellow of WASS. He is Doctor in Economics (Tinbergen Institute, Erasmus University Rotterdam, 1993). Till 2001, he was Assistant Professor Strategy and Business Environment at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam.

In education Wubben is core teacher and responsible coordinator of (core course) Advanced Management and Marketing, the MSc-thesis prep course Biobased Business/Transition, for over 15y. More recently he realized the course Biobased Business. is Since With the Since, and partakes in other (internal and external) courses. Co-organisor of various conferences, as WICaNeM, and partner, e.g., in ARBOR (EU-Interreg SI 2010-2015). He co-supervises both regular and external PhD candidates. In recent years, Gohar Nuhoff-Isakhanyan (2016) and Hanieh Kodaih, (2015) completed their PhD-trajectory under his supervision.

Regarding management, Wubben was member of the PhD Admission Committee of Mansholt Graduate School, member of admission committees of 5 MSc-programs, member of the Advisory Board for the Exploring Corporate Strategy textbook (Prentice Hall), research and educational program coordinator, member chairgroup executive committee, action leader in research projects, and sat on the program-committee of InnoFasEnergy.

Winner of the 'J.Dorfman Dissertation Award 1994' and several educational recognitions himself, Wubben was supervisor of the 2011-winner of NOBEM PhD-thesis of the year Award, for the joint Dutch business schools. Wubben has (joint) publications in a variety of journals, such as Journal of Cleaner Production, Sustainability, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, Energy Policy, British Food Journal, Journal on Chain and Network Science, Journal of Strategy and Management, China Insights Today, Postharvest Review, Supply Chain Management, and International Journal on Food System Dynamics, next to book (contribution)s for Edward Elgar, Routledge, Springer, MacMillan, and Wageningen Academic, and publications in popular press and as consultancy reports. External expert for strategic proposals of the Research Council of Norway (RCN). Prime or co-organisor of WICaNeM 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010. Speaker and lecturer in various executive settings.

Justus Wesseler

Professor, Agricultural Economics and Rural Policy Group

Wageningen University & Research

Prof. dr. JHH Wesseler graduated in agricultural, environmental and natural resource economics in Göttingen. His research is on the economics of biotechnology, value chains, and regulatory economics including issues related to coexistence. He focusses on the contribution of value chains to sustainability, and the impact of new technologies.

Jacqueline Bloemhof

Full Professor and Chair of the Operations Research and Logistics Group

Wageningen University & Research

Prof. dr. Jacqueline Bloemhof is Full Professor and Chair of the Operations Research and Logistics Group. Her main field of research is sustainable supply chain management, both in forward chains (food and other agricultural distribution networks) and closed loop supply chains (recycling and recovery of products, parts, materials or energy). She published on these topics in a large number of articles in ISI journals in the field of Operations Research and Environmental Science, Engineering and Environmental Sciences..

Argyris Kanellopoulos

Assistant Professor in Operations Research and Logistics

Wageningen University & Research

My research contributes in addressing the important question of how to design sustainable agricultural and agri-food systems that ensure supply of food, fibre and biomass and enhance agri-ecological processes within a changing socio-economic and bio-physical environment. I develop and use generic quantitative methods and decision support tools that are able to systematically evaluate the consequences of important drivers of change.

My previous and ongoing research revolves around three main topics i.e. (i) Integrated Assessment of agricultural and environmental policies, (ii) climate change and scenario studies and (iii) exploration of alternative production options in agri-food production chains.

My future research aims to span the bridge between OR models that analyse decision making in production and procurement of agricultural raw materials and decision support systems of the agri-food supply chains.

Dmytro Krushynskyi

Lecturer in Operations Research and Logistics

Wageningen University & Research

Dr Dmitry Krushinsky holds a M.Sc. degree in Applied Mathematics from the National Technical University of Ukraine "KPI" and a Ph.D. in Economics and Business from the University of Groningen. After receiving his PhD degree, he spent 3 years at Eindhoven University of Technology as a postdoc.

In the recent years, he focused on transportation problems (arc routing, ridesharing). Dr. Krushinsky's PhD research is held within the field of operations research and industrial engineering. He studied the cell formation problem in group technology from a perspective of formulating a flexible (w.r.t additional constraints and objectives) model capable of producing guaranteed optimal or close-to-optimal solutions in reasonable time.

Before starting his PhD in Groningen dr. Krushinsky was involved in research on modelling of pedestrian crowds movement. He also served as a reviewer for the European Journal of Operations Research, International Journal of Production Research, Proceedings in Mathematics.

His research interests lie mainly in the areas of applied operations research, mathematical modelling of complex systems, and routing, location and network design problems.

Ellen Slegers

Assistant Professor Operations Research and Logistics

Wageningen University & Research

Dr. ir. PM Slegers works on research projects that focus on integrated sustainable biorefineries. This work includes modelling the processing of algae biomass into various products and logistics. Furthermore, she’s involved in the development and teaching of the course Sustainability Analysis.

Ellen Slegers is a scientist working on sustainable chains with the two focus areas:

• Identifying and studying sustainable biobased and circular chains
• Quantifying and optimising sustainability performance during early design stages of (process) chains.

Core of expertise is developing simulation and optimisation models that quantitatively address the sustainability performance. In such models principles from operations management systems analysis, process engineering, and sustainability analysis (e.g. LCA) are combined. My research interest is for, but not limited to, the research fields biobased economy, biotechnology, and circular chains.

In January 2019 Ellen became Associate Editor of the Elsevier journal Algal Research (focus area LCA,TE,optimisation)