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Postdocs on digitalisation
On Friday July 9th, the section seminar on digitalisation takes place. Led by Hans van Trijp, six guest speakers will present their research on digitalisation in social science: Saman Ghaffarian, Stavros Makris, Viet Nguyen, Adina Nerghes, Abide Coskun, Serdar Demirel. After their presentations, there is time for discussion. We will discuss, among other things, how digitalisation is impacting our work. In the new academic year we plan to have these section seminars on a monthly basis, hosted by alternate chair groups from our section. The goals then are to invite external speakers with interesting topics for Business Science in general, create the opportunity to meet with potential research partners and to create a platform for social interaction within our section.
Dr. Saman Ghaffarian works as a postdoc researcher on a project called ‘Digitalisation of agriculture in support of farm business decision making under risk.’ There are many different challenges that farming systems and communities face, including economic and societal problems that may cause a risk. To help farmers to manage these risks, it is crucial to evaluate the risks. Depending on the type of the risk, various data and information can be collected and processed to support agricultural risk management (ARM). Machine learning, and in particular deep learning, methods are the state-of-the-art data processing tools in different industrial and scientific fields as well as farm management applications. The goal of this project is to develop advanced machine learning/AI methods to support farm decision making under risk.
Dr. Stavros Makris’s fields of expertise are Competition Law, Economic Law and Regulation, Legal Theory. He works as a postdoctoral researcher on a project called ‘Regulating Blockchain Sustainability in Food Value Chains.’ This project examines how existing blockchains initiatives contribute to sustainable food governance (regulation by technology) and how the law can steer this technology towards sustainability (regulation of technology). The aim of the project is to highlight how a symbiotic relationship between law and technology can lead to more sustainable FVCs.
Dr. ir. Viet Nguyen’s field of expertise is quantitative modelling of social-technical system, with specialisation in logistics & supply chain management. He works as a postdoctoral research on a project called ‘Optimising last mile logistics for end customer and societal satisfaction.’ Online shopping has become a daily routine for more and more people. Online shopping is characterized with high daily number of small orders and increasing consumer demand for short delivery time, which lead to inefficient processes in logistics systems. Yet online shopping also provides opportunities such as easier data collection from and information sharing to consumers. The focus of the project is to help consumers to make more sustainable choices of delivery for their daily online shopping.
Communication scientist dr. Adina Nerghes has a diverse academic background. Political science, organisation sciences, communication science and digital humanities are all part of it. As a postdoctoral researcher she works on a project called ‘(Ir)Responsible communication in the digital public sphere.’ It focuses mostly on science communication and what is known/what should be changed in the digital age. “I believe my project can bring an important contribution towards better science communication practices” says Adina Nerghes, “based on updated notions and theories that take into account the realities of the digital age.”
Dr. Abide Coskun-Setirek’s fields of expertise are management information systems, digital innovations, business model and data mining. She currently works as postdoctoral researcher on a project called ‘Smart Business IT Platforms for the Agri-Food Domain.’ The focus of the project is the use of IT and data science in AgriFood. Digital agri-business ecosystems with smart software modules provide a socio-technical environment to create value in collaboration with stakeholders and assist stakeholders make the right decisions for healthy food and living environment.
Dr. Serdar Demirel contributes to various projects, which are called ‘Clustering the Consumer’s Patterns’ and ‘Predictive Analytics Models in Finance.’ The main question that he seeks to answer is whether there are certain patterns in consumer behaviour. To identify patterns in the behaviour of consumers, the usage of AI plays a key role. State-of-the-art machine/deep learning algorithms are employed to identify and cluster these patterns in order to interpret them from a sociological standpoint.