Lori Lockman is an award-winning supply chain communications professional with more than 30 years of logistics writing experience.  Over the past three decades she has written hundreds of blogs, brochures, web sites, advertisements, newsletters, feature stories, and news releases for a wide variety of industry companies such as the American Logistics Aid Network, APL Logistics, AFS Logistics, Amware, XPO Logistics (formerly 3PD), Kenco, Forward Air, JB Hunt, P-I-E Nationwide, and the Port of Pensacola.   

She also has produced more than 500 supply chain stories for dozens of national trade and publications, including Inbound Logistics, Multichannel Merchant, Parcel, Food Logistics, Material Handling & Logistics, DC Velocity Online, Journal Of Commerce, APICs, Global Trade Online and World Trade, making her one of the supply chain industry’s most published professionals.

Currently serving as chief communications officer for the American Logistics Aid Network, she is the recipient of several communications awards, including numerous Addys, Golden Image Awards, a Silver Quill Award and a Transportation Marketing Communications Association Award of Excellence. She is a 1984 graduate of University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications, where she received her college’s top scholar award, and was accredited by the Florida Public Relations Association in 1990.    

Dr. Sarah Schaumann is a Postdoctoral Associate at the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, working in the Intelligent Logistics Systems Lab. She leverages AI, machine learning, and optimization methods to tackle real-world challenges in logistics. Sarah earned her Dr. Sc. ETH Zurich from ETH Zurich, where she focused on evaluating innovative last-mile logistics concepts such as collaborative truck and drone delivery systems. Additionally, she collaborated with humanitarian organizations and the INSEAD’s Humanitarian Research Group on research projects aimed at improving humanitarian fleet management. She holds an M.Sc. and B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering and Management from the Technical University of Darmstadt.

Camilo A. Mora-Quiñones is a Postdoctoral Associate at the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics, specializing in applied research, field experiments, and optimizing last-mile logistics in emerging markets to better serve nanostores. His work integrates technology, urban logistics, and supply chain innovation to enhance the efficiency and sustainability of micro-retail operations.

Mora-Quiñones holds a Ph.D. in Engineering Sciences with a focus on last-mile logistics and urban freight transportation, as well as an M.Sc. in Engineering Sciences and a B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering from Tecnológico de Monterrey, where he graduated with high distinction.

Dr. Mora-Quiñones is the 2020 recipient of the Best Master’s Thesis in Mexico Award, issued by the Mexican Logistics and Supply Chain Association, recognizing his outstanding contributions to logistics and supply chain research.

Beyond academia, he is the host of the “Emerging Market Retail Podcast,” where he engages with industry leaders and researchers to explore the future of retail in developing economies.

Prior to joining MIT, Mora-Quiñones was a lecturer at Tecnológico de Monterrey, leading research on urban freight distribution, digital transformation in nanostores, and data-driven logistics solutions. With over 12 years of experience spanning real estate, food & beverage, retail, energy, recycling, and technology, he has worked across Mexico, Colombia, the USA, and Canada, bridging industry and research to solve real-world logistics challenges.

Publications:

Mora-Quiñones, C. A., Fransoo, J. C., Velázquez-Martínez, J. C., Cárdenas-Barrón, L. E., & Escamilla, R. (2024). Assessing the impact of loading-unloading zones in emerging markets: Evidence from Mexico. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 137, 104486. 

Escamilla, R., Brosi, P., Fransoo, J. C., Mora‐Quiñones, C., & Mejía‐Argueta, C. (2024). Tax privacy concerns hamper digitization of the nanostore channel. Decision Sciences. 

Mora-Quiñones, C. A., Cárdenas-Barrón, L. E., Velázquez-Martínez, J. C., & Gámez-Pérez, K. M. (2021). The coexistence of nanostores within the retail landscape: A spatial statistical study for Mexico City. Sustainability, 13(19), 10615. 

Fransoo, J. C., & Mora-Quiñones, C. A. (2021). Decarbonizing Urban Logistics: Perspectives for Low-and Middle-Income Countries. Available at SSRN 3943360.

Angi Acocella received her Ph.D. at CTL through MIT’s Civil Engineering Department. Her current research focuses on freight transportation and explores the relationships between shippers and motor carriers and their implications on pricing and performance. Angi received her BS in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and her MSc from MIT in the Technology and Policy Program in the Engineering Systems Division on a Fellowship from the Tata Center of Technology & Design.

Prior to joining CTL, Angi was a Research Associate at Harvard Business School where she co-authored cases for both elective and required curriculum in the Technology and Operations Management unit and the Business, Government, and International Economy unit. Her previous research has appeared as peer-reviewed articles in leading engineering, economics, and business journals. Angi’s industry experience includes her work at IBM modeling and testing the thermal management design of the Z-series mainframe servers and thermal stress testing at the chip manufacturing and packaging levels.

Jaime Macias is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics (CTL), affiliated with the MIT Supply Chain Management (SCM) Master’s Program and the MIT Digital Supply Chain (Digital SC) Lab. He holds a PhD in Engineering, with a concentration in Digital Logistics, from the University of Cambridge and an MSc in International Supply Chain Management (with distinction, ranked 1st in cohort) from the University of Exeter.

Before joining MIT, Jaime was a Senior Lecturer in Industrial Engineering at ESPOL (Ecuador), where he taught courses in Sustainable Supply Chain Management, Stochastic Modelling, Forecasting, and Inventory Control. Prior to academia, he served as Head of Planning and Supply at IPAC-Duferco, a multinational in the steel sector, and worked as an independent manufacturing and logistics consultant.

His research focuses on the economic value of digitalization in supply chains, with particular attention to how Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) can adopt digital and automation solutions effectively. He develops analytical and empirical methods to quantify the value of digital technologies prior to adoption, enabling companies to make better-informed investment decisions.

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.