UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Penn State Smeal College of Business Center for Supply Chain Research (CSCR) recently announced Hui Zhao and Brent Moritz have become the center’s new co-directors of research, succeeding Aydin Alptekinoglu.
Zhao, who has an extensive background in both teaching and researching supply chain, logistics and analytics, is currently serving as a professor of supply chain management and the Charles and Lilian Binder Faculty Fellow. Her research focuses on improving supply chain effectiveness and efficiency through the application of analytics to align incentives and induce collaboration.
Moritz spent a decade working in manufacturing operations and supply chain management — including international experiences working in Mexico, England and Germany — before going on to academia. Equipped with an impressive resume of global industry experiences and academic roles, Moritz said he is prepared and excited to once again connect with practitioners who are on the front lines of challenging problems.
“Working with the center is one way to stay engaged with practice,” Moritz said.
“I’m looking forward to helping to make connections — hearing from firms about the challenges they face and connecting them to researchers who can help solve those challenges," Moritz added. "I can help spread the news about some of the excellent research already happening at Smeal.”
Zhao, too, has experiences outside academia, as her work has been well recognized by industry and government agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). She has been invited by the FDA to serve on an expert panel for U.S. drug shortages and has gone to the Department of Health and Human Services multiple times to make presentations. As the new co-director, Zhao said she seeks to apply her experiences to help bolster the center’s research portfolio and provide relevant solutions to today’s supply chain issues.
“I believe industry and academia can mutually benefit from each other. While many of our faculty do research that I believe could directly benefit the industry, the industry could feed the academia with current and future challenges that can develop into great research topics,” she explained. “CSCR is the perfect platform for such collaboration and I hope to help strengthen this mutually beneficial relationship with this co-director of research position.”
Sharing the director position for CSCR’s research agenda is a new path forward — and one where the center benefits from the expertise of two leading Smeal faculty members. The addition of a co-leadership role promises to create new initiatives and plans.
Zhao said she is excited for her new role with the center, citing CSCR as one of the earliest and most reputable supply chain knowledge banks in the nation. She believes research analytics matched with strategic industry partnerships will become another strength the center is able to offer to fellow corporate sponsors, faculty and students as well.
“I hope to advocate for our faculty's research to benefit our sponsors and to outreach to current (and potential) industry sponsors for potential collaboration,” she said. “We will also seek to publish in reputable industry-oriented journals and magazines based on center or faculty research — and may explore the possibility of starting a case library.”
Moritz said he is also eager to focus on further bridging research and academia in supply chain. He hopes to distribute short summaries of recent academic research that might be of interest to the center’s partners such as emerging research on environmental responsibility and new technologies that can impact firms.
“I want to listen to our practitioner partners and help make connections with our faculty,” Moritz said. “A friend of mine in a major firm indicated he spent decades working on outsourcing and the last two years under COVID leading efforts to re-shore critical materials. How, when and why this can be accomplished are great questions for our faculty to help address.”
As research is critical to any field, supply chain included, the faculty members’ new role serves a vital function. Industry and government agencies have daily operations and goals but may not have the capacity for the research academia is interested in and equipped to conduct, Zhao explained. Such research is key to long-term innovation in supply chain models, identifying driving forces for issues, and applying new technologies to current and future challenges.
“One of the great things about academic research is that we get to work on interesting problems that have never been solved before. The best, most interesting research solves problems that impact practice or society at large,” noted Moritz.
The two faculty members’ expertise and experience will be instrumental in achieving the center’s vision for research collaborations and solving problems that persist in supply chain.