Prof Xiangtong Qi from the Department of Industrial Engineering and Logistics Management received a Natural Science Award (Second Class) in the 2015 Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Awards (Science and Technology) presented by the Ministry of Education.

The Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Awards have been set up to recognize outstanding research projects at all tertiary institutions in China. The awards are presented to individuals or units that have made remarkable contributions in the areas of scientific discovery, technological innovation, science and technology advancement, and the implementation of patented technologies. They honor researchers who have made discoveries in natural science and applied science, or given explanations to natural phenomena and characteristics.

The awarded was given to Prof Qi and his collaborators from Nanjing University, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Hong Kong Polytechnic University for their project titled “Theory, Method, and Application of Game under Uncertain Environments”. The project aims to use game theoretic analysis to study how to cope with uncertainty, in particular unexpected disruptive events, in supply chain management. The team is among the earliest scholars who started research on disruption management, initiating basic concepts, identifying key factors in modeling, and proposing solutions. They have more than 10 years of collaboration on this topic and their work has generated wide research interest in this direction, with a lot of subsequent work conducted. For example, a number of their papers have been each cited hundreds of times, an excellent record in the area of operations management.

In addition, a School of Science faculty member received the same award for a separate project.