Business Strategy for Circular Bio-Economy

Dr. Emiel F.M. Wubben serves as Associate Professor of Strategic Management at Wageningen University and Research Fellow of WASS, bringing extensive expertise in business transitions toward sustainable and circular economies. After earning his doctorate in Economics from the Tinbergen Institute at Erasmus University Rotterdam in 1993, he served as Assistant Professor at Rotterdam School of Management until 2001 before joining Wageningen University

Dr. Jos Bijman serves as Associate Professor at Wageningen University & Research, where he has established himself as a prominent expert on agricultural cooperatives and producer organizations in agrifood value chains. After completing his studies in Economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam, he has built an extensive career studying organizational aspects of agricultural cooperation and value chain management. His research focuses on how organizational characteristics such as internal governance, ownership structures, and member commitment affect business outcomes in agricultural cooperatives and producer organizations. As project manager of the EU H2020 CO-FRESH project, he leads research on sustainable and competitive fruit and vegetable value chains in Europe. He also manages the LIQUID project, focusing on quality improvement and inclusiveness in dairy value chains across Southeast Asia and East Africa. His influential work includes editing "Cooperatives, Economic Democratization and Rural Development" (2016), which examines the transformation of cooperatives in developing countries from public-service to member-service oriented organizations. Through his research on contract farming arrangements and producer organizations, he continues to advance understanding of how business collaboration can improve quality, innovation, and sustainability in agrifood value chains. His expertise particularly shines in analyzing how organizational structures affect the performance of agricultural cooperatives, demonstrated through his extensive work on cooperative governance models and member relationships across Europe.

Dr. Renzo Akkerman serves as Associate Professor in Operations Research and Logistics at Wageningen University & Research, bringing extensive experience from previous roles as Professor at Technical University of Munich and Associate Professor at Technical University of Denmark. After completing his MSc in Econometrics and Operations Research and PhD in Operations Management from the University of Groningen, he has built an impressive career spanning food supply chain management and sustainable operations. His research focuses on integrating food quality considerations into supply chain decisions, with his most cited work addressing quality management in food distribution and supply chain optimization. As a key instructor for the MicroMasters Programme in Business and Operations for a Circular Bio-Economy, he helps students understand the operational challenges in transitioning to sustainable business models. His expertise spans multiple areas including food supply chain design, resource utilization optimization, and sustainability in operations management. Through his work examining food-specific characteristics in supply chain planning, he has significantly influenced understanding of quality, safety, and sustainability considerations in food operations. His research has garnered over 4,000 citations, with particularly influential papers on managing fresh food quality throughout supply chains and quantitative approaches to food distribution. Currently, he leads research initiatives on circular business models and sustainable supply chain management while contributing to the development of decision support tools for biobased supply chain operations.

Dr. Argyris Kanellopoulos serves as Associate Professor in Operations Research and Logistics at Wageningen University & Research, where he specializes in developing optimization models for sustainable agricultural and food systems. His research focuses on designing decision support tools that evaluate economic and environmental consequences of changes in climate, market, policy, and technology on agri-food supply chains. With over 2,400 citations and an h-index of 27, he has made significant contributions to bio-economic farm modeling and agricultural systems analysis. His work spans three main areas: integrated assessment of agricultural policies, climate change scenario studies, and exploration of alternative production options in agri-food chains. Through his teaching in the MicroMasters Programme in Business and Operations for a Circular Bio-Economy and various MOOCs, he helps students understand complex decision-making in agricultural systems. His influential publications include work on bio-economic farm models, climate change assessment for arable farming, and compromise programming for utility-based metrics. His current research aims to bridge operational research models analyzing agricultural raw materials with decision support systems for agri-food supply chains, while developing quantitative methods to evaluate drivers of change in agricultural systems. As a key researcher in sustainable agriculture, he continues to advance our understanding of how to design food systems that ensure supply while enhancing agri-ecological processes within changing socio-economic and bio-physical environments.

Dr. Dmytro Krushynskyi serves as Lecturer in Operations Research and Logistics at Wageningen University & Research, where he specializes in mathematical modeling and optimization of complex systems. After completing his MSc in Applied Mathematics from the National Technical University of Ukraine "KPI" and PhD in Economics and Business from the University of Groningen, he spent three years as a postdoctoral researcher at Eindhoven University of Technology. His research focuses on transportation optimization, particularly arc routing and ridesharing problems, with significant contributions to the share-a-ride problem and multi-depot capacitated arc routing. Through his teaching of courses including Principles of Biobased Economy and various MOOCs in business operations, he helps students understand complex optimization problems and their practical applications. His expertise spans multiple areas including operations research, mathematical modeling, and transportation optimization, with particular emphasis on developing flexible models for optimal solutions in reasonable time frames. His early work on cell formation problems and pedestrian crowd modeling has evolved into broader applications in transportation and logistics optimization. As a reviewer for prestigious journals and instructor of multiple courses in the Operations Research and Logistics group, he continues to advance the field while developing practical solutions for complex routing and network design problems.