Dr. Benedict Jun Ma is a Postdoctoral Associate affiliated with the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics and the Digital Supply Chain Transformation Lab. Before this, he earned his PhD in Industrial Engineering from The University of Hong Kong, under the supervision of Prof. Yong-Hong Kuo and Prof. George Q. Huang. His research interests include e-commerce warehousing and logistics, supply chain management, and data-driven operations management. His work has been published in leading journals such as IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Computers & Industrial Engineering, Knowledge-Based Systems, International Journal of Production Economics, and Transportation Research Part D.

Pamela Siska has been a Lecturer in MIT’s Comparative Media Studies/Writing program since 1993 and a Lecturer in SCM since 2015. Pamela holds an MA in English from Boston University and a PhD in English from the University of Pretoria. Pamela has published on medieval, Victorian, and Romantic literature as well as writing pedagogy, and was a contributor to the MIT-authored The Mayfield Handbook of Technical & Scientific Writing. She is also a freelance editor.

Sean Willems is the Haslam Chair in Supply Chain Analytics at the University of Tennessee’s Haslam College of Business. In 2000, he co-founded Optiant, a provider of multi-echelon inventory optimization tools, which was later acquired by Logility, Inc. He has been a visiting professor of operations management at the MIT Sloan School of Management since 2016. His work with companies such as Hewlett Packard, Proctor & Gamble, and Intel has led to finalist selections for the 2003, 2010, and 2017 Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research and the Management Sciences. He has been a finalist in 2006, 2008 and 2012 for the Daniel H. Wagner Prize for Excellence in Operations Research Practice. His work on inventory placement under non-stationary demand won the Wagner Prize in 2008. Willems is the department editor of the practice section of the journal Production and Operations Management and he is the deputy editor of Interfaces. He received his bachelor’s degree in decision sciences from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and his master’s in operations research and doctorate in operations management from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Selene Silvestri is a Research Scientist at the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics, and she is part of the Megacity Logistics Lab. Her current research spans across the area of supply chain network design and optimization. Her work is performed in collaboration with global organizations, and it aims to help such organizations improve decision-making in their supply chain.

Dr. Silvestri received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Salerno, in Italy. During her Ph.D. she was a Visiting Student at the Interuniversity Research Center on Enterprise Networks, Logistics and Transportation (CIRRELT) in Montréal, Canada. After her doctoral studies, Dr. Silvestri was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the École des Hautes Études Commerciales (HEC) in Montréal, Canada, affiliated with the Institute for Data Valorisation (IVADO) and the Interuniversity Research Center on Enterprise Networks, Logistics and Transportation (CIRRELT). Her research interests were in the areas of humanitarian logistics, network design, and combinatorial optimization. Her works has led to articles that are published in Computers & Operations Research, Production and Operations Management (POMS), Networks, Soft Computing, and Optimization Letters. The research she conducted as Postdoctoral Fellow has led to two award-winning papers.

Tim Russell is a Research Engineer at the MIT Humanitarian Supply Chain Lab. He is responsible for the Humanitarian Lab’s engagement in the USAID/Uganda | Feed the Future – Value Chain | Market System Monitoring Activity. Prior to this role, Mr. Russell conducted research with WFP on their cash and voucher program in Darfur. He has worked across the Caribbean, Latin America, Former Yugoslavia, and East Africa on humanitarian supply chains. Prior to that, he worked in industry as a Director of Supply Chain Network Strategy for PepsiCo. Mr. Russell has his M. Eng from MIT and B.S. from Georgia Tech.

Christopher Mejía Argueta is a Research Scientist at the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics. He develops applied research on retailing operations and food supply chains for multiple stakeholders including consumer packaged goods manufacturers, carriers and retailers in the Food and Retail Operations Lab (FaROL). His research focuses on improving the efficiency, flexibility of operations in multiple stakeholders, designing route-to-market and logistics strategies to address changing purchasing patterns, coupling these dynamic consumer profiles with the retail landscape, and reducing undesired socioeconomic and health problems related to income disparity, social backwardness, food malnutrition, food waste by proposing sustainable policies, business models to help vulnerable population segments.

Dr. Chris Mejía is also the Director of the MIT Supply Chain and Global Logistics Excellence (SCALE) Network for Latin America. This initiative, conducted by the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics in the region, aims to lead impactful research and education projects for all companies, public sector and society together with Latin American top universities and the support of the Center for Latin-American Logistics Innovation (CLI). In addition, Dr. Chris Mejía serves as the Director of the MIT Graduate Certificate in Logistics & Supply Chain Management (GCLOG), an elite program from the MIT SCALE Network, geared towards outstanding graduate students from Latin America.

He holds a M.Sc. in Industrial Engineering with focus on supply chain management and multicriteria optimization, and a PhD in Industrial Engineering with focus on Humanitarian Operations. Dr. Mejía got both degrees with summa cum laude honors (best grade, top 1% students) in both classes at Monterrey Tech, Mexico. In 2013, Dr. Mejía was the academic leader at CLI, where he developed dozens of projects with industry and other academic partners related to disaster response, green logistics, packaging and last-mile distribution in emerging markets. Prior to joining MIT CTL, Dr. Mejía Argueta was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Eindhoven University of Technology (TUe), the Netherlands, where he investigated retailing operations for emerging markets and formulated estimation models to analyze the prevalence of nanostores in emerging markets. He is author and editor of the books: 1) Reaching 50 Million Nanostores: Retail Distribution in Emerging Megacities, 2) Supply Chain Management and Logistics in Latin America: A multi-country perspective and 3) Supply Chain Management and Logistics in Emerging Markets.

He has over 12 years of experience and his work in over 10 countries in three different continents has been focused on improving the efficiency of operations across the supply chains. He is co-editor of a variety of special issues in recognized journals, author of scientific papers published in top journals. He has developed dozens of industry projects focus on the reality of emerging markets regarding transportation, logistics, retailing and supply chain management. 

Miguel Rodríguez García is a Research Scientist of the Omnichannel Supply Chain Lab at MIT CTL. He has knowledge on all aspects of SCM including Procurement, Warehousing, Manufacturing and Transportation with a focus on e-commerce and omnichannel logistics. He has collaborated with over 25 industry leaders through applied research projects with direct, positive economic impact throughout his career. Currently he’s carrying state-of-the-art research with the Omnichannel Supply Chain Lab about the future of supply chains and warehousing due to the growth of e-commerce and technology developments.

He received his PhD on E-grocery Supply Chain Management from the Industrial Engineering School at the University of Vigo, Spain, in 2021. His PhD work aimed to serve as a guide so that omnichannel retailers in the e-grocery industry can choose the most suitable e-fulfillment strategies from a cost perspective.

He also works in digital learning, supporting the development, research and management of the MITx MicroMasters Program in Supply Chain Management.

Dr. Sreedevi R is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics – LIFT Lab. Her current research seeks to understand small and micro firms’ business and supply chain practices to increase their survival rate and productivity. 

She received her Ph.D. in Production & Operations Management from the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. Her doctoral dissertation is in the area of supply chain risk management. Her research has been recognized as one of the Emerging Economies Doctoral Student Finalist Award winners, presented at the POMS 27th Annual Conference in Orlando, USA. In addition to her dissertation and current research, other research interests include sustainable sourcing, diversity & inclusion in supply chains and affordable healthcare operations.  

For the past four years, Sreedevi has been on the faculty at the S P Jain Institute of Management & Research (SPJIMR), Mumbai, India, where she has taught courses such as Operations Management, Procurement & Strategic Sourcing, Business Statistics and Behavioral Operations.  

Prior to her Ph.D., Dr. Sreedevi worked in the industry and industrial research and development projects for about five years. She completed a B.Tech. from Madras University and a M.Tech in Textile Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. 

Dr. Inma Borrella is a Research Scientist at the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics (MIT CTL). She works as the Academic Lead for in the MITx MicroMasters Program in Supply Chain Management, coordinating Massive Open Online Courses as well as the on-campus MIT Supply Chain Bootcamp program. 

She is interested in exploring how digitalization and new technologies are transforming the way people learn, socialize, and do business. She currently contributes to the MIT Digital Supply Chain Transformation Lab and the MIT Omnichannel in Education Lab.

Inma received her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from the Technical University of Madrid, in which she explored the role of inclusive businesses to create more socially sustainable agri-food supply chains. 

Dr. Yossi Sheffi is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he serves as Director of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics (MIT CTL). He is an expert in systems optimization, risk analysis, and supply chain management, which are the subjects he teaches and researches at MIT. He is the author of many scientific publications and nine books:

Urban Transportation Networks: Equilibrium Analysis with Mathematical Programming Methods (Prentice Hall, 1985)

The Resilient Enterprise: Overcoming Vulnerability for Competitive Advantage (MIT Press, 2005)

Logistics Clusters: Delivering Value and Driving Growth (MIT Press, 2012)

The Power of Resilience: How the Best Companies Manage the Unexpected (MIT Press, 2015)

Balancing Green: When to Embrace Sustainability in a Business (and When Not To) (MIT Press, 2018)

The New (Ab)Normal: Reshaping Business and Supply Chain Strategy Beyond Covid-19 (CTL Media, 2020) 

A Shot in the Arm: How Science, Engineering, and Supply Chains Converged to Vaccinate the World (CTL Media, 2021)

Strategic Planning for Dynamic Supply Chains: Preparing for Uncertainty Using Scenarios (Palgrave, 2022) 

The Magic Conveyor Belt: Supply Chains, AI, and the Future of Work (CTL Media, 2023)

Under his leadership, MIT CTL launched many new educational, research, and industry/government outreach programs, leading to substantial growth. He founded the MITx MicroMasters in Supply Chain Management. He is the founder and the Director of MIT’s Master of Supply Chain Management degree. He also led the international expansion of MIT CTL by launching the Supply Chain and Logistics Excellence (SCALE) global network of academic centers of education and research. The network includes centers modeled after MIT CTL in Zaragoza, Spain; Bogota, Colombia; and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

From 2007 to 2011 he served as the Director of the MIT Engineering Systems Division, where he set a strategy, revamped the PhD program, and set the division for future growth.

Outside the university Professor Sheffi has consulted with governments and leading manufacturing, retail and transportation enterprises all over the world. He is also an active entrepreneur, having founded and co-founded five successful companies:

Princeton Transportation Consulting Group Inc.

LogiCorp Inc.

e-Chemicals Inc.

Syncra Inc.

Logistics.com Inc.

Dr. Sheffi was recognized in numerous ways in academic and industry forums and was on the cover of Purchasing Magazine and Transportation and Distribution Magazine. In 1997 he won the most prestigious recognition given by the Council of Logistics Management—the Distinguished Service Award. In 2006 he won the Aragón International Prize. In 2010 he became an honorary Doctor (Doctor Honoris Causa) of the University of Zaragoza in Spain and in 2011 he was awarded the Salzberg Medal and Award for “outstanding leadership and innovations in Supply Chain management” by the University of Syracuse. He is also a life fellow of Cambridge University’s Clare Hall College. View a complete list of awards here.

He obtained his B.Sc. from the Technion in Israel in 1975, his S.M. from MIT in 1977, and Ph.D. from MIT in 1978. He now resides in Boston, Massachusetts.