Meet the Low Carbon SMEs project team who are here to help you with your business needs. To find out more, please click on the photograph.
Prasanta Dey : Prasanta is Professor of Operations Management at Aston Business School. He won...
Jean-Luc Bulber : Jean-Luc has extensive experience in the automotive industry. He is a pragmatic...
Mark Smith : Mark has worked at Groundwork before joining Aston University. Mark has extensive experience...
Adiba Amin : Adiba has diverse experience in Project Administration for Funded projects. Before joining...
Dhaivat Joshi : Dhaivat is an MBA student at Aston Business School. He has over...
Rutvi Sheth : Rutvi is a highly driven, enthusiastic, and skilled professional with distinctive technical...
Reader in Mathematics & Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy UK (SFHEA)
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Prasanta is Professor of Operations Management at Aston Business School. He won Vice Chancellor award for research excellence in 2012. Prior to joining Aston University in 2004, he worked for five years in the University of the West Indies in Barbados as a Director of graduate project management program and 13 years in Indian Oil Corporation Limited, India as a project executive.
Prasanta specializes in supply chain management and project management. He has published more than hundred research papers in leading international refereed journals. He has accomplished several research projects in supply chain optimisation and project management maturity studies in manufacturing, services and construction globally covering both small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and large sectors.
Jean-Luc has extensive experience in the automotive industry. He is a pragmatic and resourceful engineer, who worked as project manager in an ISO TS16949 and ISO14001 environment, achieving FORD Q1 and JLR Q quality certifications.
As industrial engineering manager in Birmingham, he grew a network of local suppliers and contractors, with an expertise in the relocation, installation, and commissioning of production processes. He enjoys working with cross-functional teams, has a practical and analytical approach of problem solving and continuous improvement, and delivers results in a controlled, timely and effective manner.
Graduated from the Arts et Métiers ParisTech in France, he is professionally registered as Chartered Engineer and member of the IMechE, committed to helping people around him achieve their best.
He is fluent in French, English, German and Spanish.
Pavel Albores (MIET) is a Senior Lecturer in Operations Management in the Operations and Information Management Group at Aston Business School (ABS) and co-director of the Centre for Research into Safety and Security (CRISIS) at ABS. He received his PhD on Simulation of e-business processes from Strathclyde University, where he also gained an MSc in Manufacturing Management. His first degree is in Chemical Engineering. Pavel’s major research interests revolve around the fields of simulation, supply chain management, emergency management and humanitarian logistics.
Pavel has worked with leading governmental organisations in the field of preparedness in nine countries as co-investigator in an EC-funded project (Evacuation Responsiveness for Government Organisations (ERGO). He has participated in research projects in the areas of knowledge management in extended enterprises and supply chain management. He has acted as consultant in the area of modelling and simulation with the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) -Fire Service directorate-, Highland Spring, Daks Group. He previously worked for Xerox. Pavel was a member of the EPSRC Manufacturing Futures Network.
Operations & Information Management Group
Aston Business School
Mark has worked at Groundwork before joining Aston University. Mark has extensive experience in delivering environmental innovation programmes for business. This includes low-carbon innovation, eco-design and energy efficiency. The main focus has been on support for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). I also have experience of business development and research funding (Research Councils, national and European funding).
Previous experience includes teaching and research in various Universities, including PhD supervision, and contributing to European environmental policy. I have also managed research projects, including Industry-University collaborative projects. I am a published author in peer-reviewed journals, books, conferences, reports, and articles. I have wide-ranging experience of presenting at and reviewing submissions to international conferences.
Krishna is a Teaching Fellow in Service Operations Management at Aston Business School. With a background in research and consultancy, his skills range from process modelling and business analysis to delivering strategic change programmes.
He joined Aston in autumn 2018 after successfully delivering a number of strategic projects for a leading law firm based in the West Midlands, UK and having worked there for nearly 7 years as a Change and Project Manager. Previously in the role of a Service Development Executive employed by Aston Business School, he delivered an award-winning KTP project which was funded by ERDF through Innovate UK.
Krishna’s work was award-winning and recognised by some of the leading forums (ILTA, The Lawyer, Innovate UK, EFMD) in the field of innovation in legal services and knowledge transfer both within the UK and internationally.
Adiba has diverse experience in Project Administration for Funded projects. Before joining Aston, Adiba worked as Project Administrator for Big Lottery Funded project aimed at increasing employability in Birmingham. The project exceeded outcomes in all areas. Adiba won the Best in Practice award at BT Fleet for excellent contribution in business process improvement to reduce cost and increase process efficiency.
Qualifications- MBA from Brunel University, London.
Dhaivat is an MBA student at Aston Business School. He has over seven years of experience in Renewable Energy. Before joining Aston, he worked as a Business Development professional in the Indian conglomerate Adani Group. He has handled the business side of the successful acquisition of numerous RE projects and won several RE projects through competitive bidding. His area of expertise includes tendering, contract management, M&A and liaison.
Besides this, Dhaivat is passionate about sustainable energy and pursuing Energy Economics at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. He is constantly acquiring knowledge of the global energy market and developing analytical skills to improve business strategies.
Dhaivat is currently working as student placement with Low Carbon SMEs programme. He intends to contribute toward sustainable energy by reducing carbon emissions and making efforts to achieve Net-Zero targets.
Pawan is a member of the Work and Organisational Psychology Group, Joint Director of the Aston India Centre for Applied Research and Joint Co-Editor-in-Chief of British Journal of Management, Pawan is globally renowned for his research into the international aspects of HRM, and has held many visiting professorships worldwide. He has examined HRM systems in emerging markets and established links with social, cultural, political and legal contexts, and this is increasingly being referenced by other researchers.
Pawan has received funding from a variety of funders such as the ESRC, Society for HRM (USA), British Academy, and ERDF to investigate a variety of HR aspects in different set-ups. Pawan regularly delivers keynotes at international and national events. He has received numerous awards for his research achievements.
Work and Organisational Psychology Department
Rutvi is a highly driven, enthusiastic, and skilled professional with distinctive technical (BTech) and managerial (MBA) skills. She has worked as a Data Analyst with experience in data visualisation, data warehousing, and Release Management for over three years. She can communicate effectively and responsibly with many stakeholders and clients. Alongside her academic and corporate commitments, she is also heading the HR and Communications team of TEDx Aston University.
Her passion for the sustainable technology sector has made her inquisitive about acquiring knowledge of the global green market and constantly working on developing skills to improve sustainable tech strategies.
Rutvi is currently working with the Low Carbon SMEs programme as student placement. With her exceptional data analysing and digitization skills, Rutvi will be playing a key role in the Sustainability Dashboard project which is aimed to digitalize the process of calculating the Carbon footprint for SMEs.
Before starting his academic career, Luciano developed large industrial experience by working in the ICT sector for eleven years. During this period, he worked as systems analyst, outsourcing manager, information manager and CIO (Chief Information Officer) for large corporations in Brazil and the USA. Luciano’s PhD research focused upon the applicability of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and strategies in the government context. Since then, the research included other key areas of the value chain such as Operations, Logistics and Supply Chain Management.
At Aston, Luciano’s research focuses mainly on sustainability aspects of operations, logistics and supply chains, with particular emphasis on exploring the interface between the circular economy and the digital economy. Luciano has published and presented his work in major international conferences in Europe, USA, Brazil and China. He has also published his research in high-ranked academic journals, amongst them the International Journal of Production Economics, International Journal of Production Research, Production Planning & Control, and Supply Chain Management: An International Journal. He is regular reviewer for these journals and also acts as Editorial Board Member for the journals International Journal of Supply Chain and Operations Resilience, International Journal of Industrial Engineering and Operations Management, and Management Review (RAUSP). He is also a board member of the CILT (Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport) LRN (Logistics Research Network) Forum. Luciano also acted as External Examiner for the Management Programme at the University of Exeter and is currently engaged as External Supervisor of research projects in the Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) at Warwick University. He was also Member of the Scientific Committee for several EurOMA Conferences.
Ahmad Beltagui is a Lecturer in Project and Operations Management in the Operations and Information Management Group at Aston Business School. He holds degrees in Engineering (MEng Product Design Engineering, University of Strathclyde) and Management (PhD Operations Management, University of Nottingham).
Operations & Information Management Group
Aston Business School
Ben is Professor of Operations Management, in the Operations and Information Management Group at Aston Business School. Ben Clegg’s research, teaching and consulting activities focus on operations and process improvement. He draws upon theoretical ideas, such as systems thinking and multi-organisation enterprise management, to implement practical solutions for organisations. In turn practical case studies and insights are used to further develop theory about operations and process improvement.
Operations & Information Management Group
Aston Business School
Akram Dehnokhalaji is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at OIM Department at Aston University. She was graduated from the National Organization for Development of Exceptional Talents (NODET) high school in Iran in 2000 and passed the university entrance exam with a high rank and accepted at continuously PhD program in Applied Mathematics at Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran. She won a scholarship for 3 years during her undergraduate studies as an exceptionally talented student and did her MSc in Operations Research. As a doctoral candidate, she won a 6-month fund from the Ministry of Science to visit Aalto University School of Business in 2008. Then she was employed by Aalto University as a researcher in Quantitative Methods in Management and Economics. She did the research part of her thesis jointly between Aalto University School of Business and Faculty of Mathematical and Computer Sciences of Kharazmi University. She defended her PhD in 2010. She worked as an adjunct at Kharazmi, postdoctoral researcher at Aalto, and Assistant Professor at Kharazmi University. She taught several undergraduate and graduate courses. She also supervised several Master and PhD dissertations. She has several Publications in highly ranked journals in Operations Research such as European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of the Operational Research Society, Annals of Operations Research, OR Spectrum, etc. Her research interests include efficiency analysis and decision making, multi-criteria decision making, business analytics and machine learning.
Ozren Despic is Lecturer in Management Science in the Operations and Information Management Group at Aston Business School. He received his PhD in Industrial Engineering from the University of Toronto, Canada. His research interest is in the area of mathematical modelling and decision making. In particular, his focus is on developing and constructing geometric DEA based mathematical models for their use in performance measurement and managerial decision making.
He is also actively helping various SMEs in optimising their operational and marketing activities. Ozren has a great amount of international experience, having lived, studied and worked in many different countries over the past 20 years. He is a devoted teacher and he brings his consulting work directly to the classroom.
Operations & Information Management Group
Aston Business School
Dr. Stella Despoudi is Lecturer in Operations and Supply Chain Management at the Aston Business School since September 2018. Prior to this Stella has been working for Coventry University and for Loughborough University’s School of Business & Economics. She holds a PhD in Operations and Supply Chain Management from Loughborough University’s School of Business and Economics. Stella’s research expertise lies in the following research areas: food supply chain management, supply chain resilience, severe weather events and climatic changes, emergency logistics, food waste and food sustainability, resource efficiency. Currently she works on a multi-partner projects related to food supply chain resilience, climatic changes, and Industry 4.0 funded from ESRC and other UK funding bodies. She is Teaching Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and member of Production & Operations Management Society, and European Operations Management Association.
Ali Emrouznejad is a Professor and Chair in Business Analytics and has been working in various areas of Operations Research and Statistic generally and Data Envelopment Analysis specifically since 1993. He holds an MSc in applied mathematics and received his PhD in operational research and systems from Warwick Business School, UK. Having got PhD in the area of DEA, in 1998, he has joined to the development team of Performance Indicators (PI) in Higher Education (HE) at HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council for England). The PI in HE has widely published and it is now annual publication of HESA (Higher Education Statistical Agency). He has worked on several research projects including: “assessing cost efficiencies in higher education” funded by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) and “Analysis of efficiencies and productivity evolution in manufacturing industries with CO2 emissions in China” funded by Royal Academy of Engineering.
His areas of research interest include performance measurement and management, efficiency and productivity analysis as well as data mining and big data.
Dr Emrouznejad is Editor of Annals of Operations Research, Associate Editor of Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Associate Editor of IMA journal of Management Mathematics, Associate Editor of RAIRO – Operations Research, Senior Editor of Data Envelopment Analysis journal and member of editorial boards or guest editor in several other scientific journals. He has published over 100 articles in top ranked journals; he has published several books including:
He is also co-founder of Performance Improvement Management Software (PIM-DEA). Ali’s website (www.DEAzone.com) in DEA has internationally recognised as a main source for DEA users.
Publications-
Oscar Rodríguez-Espíndola is a lecturer in Operations and Supply Chain Management at Operations and Information Management Group at Aston Business School and a member of the Aston CRISIS centre. He received his PhD in Operations and Information Management from Aston University. He holds a BSc in Mechanical Engineering and a MSc in Transportation Engineering from the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México.
His research is focused on Supply Chain Management, Operational Research, Humanitarian logistics and Project Management. His expertise includes de use of optimisation models, simulation and geographical information systems for the analysis of the supply chain and the development of tools to support logistics activities.
Operations & Information Management Group
Aston Business School
Dr Donato Masi is Senior Lecturer in Operations Management at Aston University in Birmingham. He holds a PhD degree in Management Engineering and an MSc in Mechanical Engineering from Politecnico di Milano, Italy. He is a specialist in Sustainable Operations and Supply Chain Management and he published several scientific papers in the top ranked international journals for this area. He actively collaborates with industry through private and public funded research projects. He is currently focusing on how digitalisation and the emerging Industry 4.0 approach can enhance the sustainability of Operations and Supply Chains.
Breno is Senior Lecturer in the Operations and Information Management Group at Aston Business School. Breno has a background (BSc and MSc) in Industrial Engineering and PhD degree in management from Aston University. He joined Aston Business School in 2010. Dr Breno Nunes helps companies and governments to respond to sustainability challenges and opportunities. His work focuses on strategic decisions for operations function. Breno investigates sustainability strategies, environmental decision making processes, and green technology management in both developed and developing countries.
His recent research publications deal with a variety of sustainability issues, including: sustainable operations strategy, green innovation management, electric cars and sustainable mobility, sustainability performance and systems dynamics. Breno is currently Vice President of Education, Research and Publications for IAMOT – The International Association for Management of Technology.
Operations & Information Management Group
Aston Business School
Dr. Gajanan Panchal is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Operations Management at Aston Business School. His academic research interests include Supply Chain Management, Logistics Management, Application of Microeconomics in Supply Chain, e-Commerce Demand Planning and Simulation Analytics. His research work helps businesses with innovative solutions for their supply chain operations. His focus is on applied research across a wide range of businesses. Before joining ABS, Gajanan was working as a Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore (NUS) for more than five years. At NUS, we were associated with the Centre for Next Generation Logistics (C4NGL), where he was working on a project funded by Singapore’s Economic Development Board (EDB), National Research Foundation and Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR). The nature of this funding was to collaborate with industry partners in the process of developing a Digital Twin of their warehouse operations. He was a pivotal researcher who also served as a project lead coordinating industry project and making sure the objectives are met in time. At NUS, Gajanan was also associated with The Logistics Institute Asia-Pacific (TLIAP), where he worked with many industry partners across board to provide researched solution to their supply chains. Most of the projects he handled and lead got great attention from industry higher management, which resulted in successful implementation and deployment of project outcome. One of his project findings were selected and presented in a special supply chain innovation event at the 2018 Winter Olympics at the Republic of Korea. Gajanan actively publishes his research in peer reviewed journals like OMEGA, Journal of Manufacturing Systems, Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management. He also has a vast editorial experience as reviewer and editor for special issues.
Aristides joined Aston University in August 2011, as a Lecturer in Logistics and Supply Chain Management. Prior to that, he was an Adjunct Lecturer for 4 years in the University of Macedonia, in the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and also in City College, the International Faculty of the University of Sheffield teaching Logistics and Supply Chain
In 2010, He was awarded a one year post-doc grant on “Innovation in the Food Chain” from the Greek State Scholarships Foundation. He also worked as a researcher in the FP6 European Project “e-Trust”, which dealt with the exploration and analysis of the trust factors affecting companies in the food chain in their transition from traditional to electronic B2B relationships. I have also been involved in several consulting projects as a freelance consultant.
School of Engineering & Applied Science
Amit is an ‘interdisciplinary Complex Systems’ theorist specialising in quantitative problem solving in physics, biology and finance, using techniques from statistical physics, nonlinear dynamics and numerical computation. He has so far authored or co-authored over 60 research publications and 2 books. One of these books (‘Heat and Thermodynamics’) is the internationally accepted standard text on the subject. He is the chief editor of an open sourced interdisciplinary journal. I am also a panelled reviewer of EPSRC. He is an Editorial Board member of the Nature Publishing group; independently, so an Editorial member of staff in the Frontiers in Physics group.
His research novelty lies in combining four diverse research strands –
School of Engineering & Applied Science
Sudeshna is an International Management scholar, her research examines the theory of the psychological contract in the context of new employment relationships within an offshored outsourced call centre in the Indian labour market. The research contributes significantly to the psychological contract theory and contextual call centre literature.
Recent research explores the impact and future of the outsourced businesses in India, on the life and careers of youth who find themselves solely trained for this particular service industry.
Nicholas Theodorakopoulos is Professor of Entrepreneurship Development and Head of Work and Organisational Psychology Department at Aston Business School. He is Director of the Aston Centre for People and Organisations, Academic Deputy Director of the Goldman Sachs ’10,000 Small Businesses Programme’.
He has received funding from various organisations, including ESRC, ERDF, Department for Business, Innovation & Skills, Equality and Human Rights Commission, Leicestershire Learning and Skills Council, Centre for Enterprise and UK Trade and Investment to examine entrepreneurship in different contexts and has managed successfully research teams to deliver high quality output. Apart from contributing to a number of books and special issues as a guest editor, his papers have been published in a wide range of academic journals.
Work and Organisational Psychology Department
