Nezih Altay is a professor of supply chain management in the Driehaus School of Business. This fall he received a 2019 Research and Academic Contributions award from the American Logistics Aid Network. (Image courtesy of Nezih Altay)
This fall, Nezih Altay, a professor of supply chain management in the Driehaus School of Business, received a 2019 Research and Academic Contributions award from the American Logistics Aid Network. His award, the Humanitarian Logistics award, honors those who demonstrate best how supply chain management can aid communities in the face of disaster relief.
ALAN notes Altay as one of the first academics in the United States to highlight the value of applying supply chain management and operations research into disaster relief. Altay’s research in disaster management began in the early 2000s after experiencing an earthquake in Turkey in 1999.
“When I started this research, I found the operations management community was not doing any disaster management research,” he says. “We in the operations management and logistics community are responsible for the production and movement of goods, and after disasters there are a lot of relief items that need to be moved.”
Altay stimulated research in humanitarian logistics research with a 2006 paper, “OR/MS Research in Disaster Operations Management,” which remains the most cited paper in its field with 1,349 citations to date.
“We’re extremely proud of Nezih’s achievement,” says Misty Johanson, dean of the Driehaus College of Business. “His innovative research connects theory and practice and has inspired researchers worldwide to examine the role of logistics in disaster relief.”
The American Logistics Aid Network seeks to assist humanitarian organizations with supply chain management in order to ensure disaster relief is efficiently and quickly dispersed. The organization aims to not only accomplish more, but also to aid more survivors.