Which courses do you teach this year?

I teach the seminar Supply Chain Management and Optimization for the UPTE MSc, Stochastic Models and Optimisation for Operations Research and Quantitative Logistics MSc, Simulation for the EQI Data Science program, Management Science 2 and Supply Chain Management 2,3 for the MSc in Maritime Economics and Logistics, Container Logistics in the Port Management and Maritime Logistics Minor.

 

What do you like most about the course that you teach/your field of expertise?

The seminar always faces the problem to do difficult things in an easy and understandable way, without compromising too much on the accuracy. In the other courses I like to teach how you can improve logistics with quantitative models.

 

What did you study and where?

I studied mathematics in Leiden and Industrial Engineering in Twente. 

 

What kind of student were you?

I was doing too much: studying also physics and astronomy (also BSc), doing too much sports (rowing, sailing, condition training, mountain climbing, judo, karate, Batavieren run, Head or river Thames), being involved in all kind of committees (board of a rowing club, department and faculty council, chairman of student association, nestor of student home) and I still had very nice holiday.

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Looking back, is there anything you would do differently about your time as a student?

Oops, may-be I should have focused more, but all things I did were really rewarding.

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What do you like to do in your spare time?

Sports first, some gaming, Netflix, checking sustainability news.

 

What are you most proud of?

The students and PhDs I supervised / stimulated (some are professor, one was (sic) CEO of a 1000 employee company, yet I hope the have good memories of my involvement with them).

 

What is your advice to this year's UPT students?

If you like computers: learn data science and programming. Once you got a job: do not work too hard, but do the right things and enjoy what you are doing.

 

Can you tell us a fun fact about yourself?

I once erroneously gave an associate prof a gown to wear during a PhD defense and the rector was really angry about me, while I did not realise my mistake.

I used to fly a lot for conferences all over the world. Sometimes I see men changing big spreadsheets, and when I talk to them, they are consultants. Once I flew for a conference to Australia through Abu Dhabi. In the plane I saw a girl in the row before me change the graphs in her slides. During the stop over I managed to talk with her and she appeared to be a medical researcher also on her way to a conference (although different from mine) in Australia.

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