Panel Sessions
Submission Link: https://www.xcdsystem.com/IEOM/abstract/index.cfm?ID=8fwmHJ5
Registration Link: https://www.xcdsystem.com/IEOM/attendee/index.cfm?ID=ORne27j
Panel
Leadership, inclusion and the Future of Engineering Management
3:00 – 5:00 pm (Thursday, November 26, 2026) – Room 2
Topics of interest (But not limited to)
Gender Disparities in Leadership Positions, Implicit Bias and Stereotypes, Work-Life Balance and Family-Friendly Policies, Career Advancement and Promotion, Gender Pay Gap, Networking and Professional Development, Discrimination, Recognition, Policy Advocacy
Panel Chair
Dr Dilupa Nakandala
Professor, Associate Dean of Graduate Studies
School of Business, Human Resources & Management
Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia
Professor Dilupa Nakandala’s research interests are in innovation and technology transfer management and supply chain management. Her research has been recognised by funding from the Australian Research Council, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia and Western Sydney University. She has published her research in top-tier journals, including Decision Support Systems, Knowledge-based Systems, European Journal of Operational Research, Supply Chain Management Journal, Int’l Journal of Production Research, and Int’l Journal of Technology Management. She has also published several book chapters and in practitioner journals and was the lead author of the ‘South Asia’ chapter of the latest UNESCO Science Report.
Dilupa obtained BSc in electrical and electronic engineering (First Class Hons) at the University of Peradeniya, MBA in management of technology at the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka and PhD in innovation studies at Western Sydney University. Dilupa possesses a rare and diverse research method skillset where those qualitative and quantitative research skills enable her to do studies using the case study method, fuzzy expert systems, genetic algorithm, agent-based modelling, and structural equation modelling. She teaches innovation, entrepreneurship, and project management at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Before joining academia in 2007, she held multiple roles in engineering, integrated solution designs, quality assurance, business, process and project management, and compliance in a multinational business environment for over eight years. She is also a certified Project Management Professional in PMI, USA and a Design Thinking practitioner and has the PRINCE2 Practitioner qualification.
Panel Speaker I
Panel Speaker II
Panel Speaker III
Panel Speaker IV
Panel
Net Zero and Sustainable Operations Panel
3:00 – 4:45 pm (Wednesday, November 25, 2026) – Room 1
Topics of interest (But not limited to)
Decarbonising Industrial Operations, Digital Transformation as an Enabler of Net Zero, Sustainable Supply Chains and Scope 3 Emissions, Circular Economy in Operations, Energy Efficiency vs. Renewable Transition, Financial and Policy Barriers to Net Zero, Resilience vs. Sustainability Trade-offs, Net Zero in Emerging Economies, Future of Sustainable Operations, From Net Zero Targets to Operational Reality
Chair
Dr Sanjoy Paul
Associate Professor
UTS Business School, University of Technology Sydney (UTS)
Sydney, Australia
Sanjoy Kumar Paul is an associate professor of operations and supply chain management at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Sydney, Australia. He is an associate editor of Business Strategy and the Environment and Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management. He is also an editorial board member and guest editor of several other top-ranked journals.
Dr Paul has received several recognitions and awards in his career, including the Research with Relevance award, the top 2% of scientists (three times based on citations in 2020-2022) in author databases of standardized citation indicators, the ASOR Rising Star Award, Excellence in Early Career Research Award, the Stephen Fester prize for most outstanding thesis, and high-impact publications award for publishing articles in top-tier journals.
His research interests include supply chain risk management, sustainability, and applied operations research.
Panel Speaker I
Dr Turlough Guerin
Honorary (Fellow)
Department of Infrastructure Engineering
Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology
The University of Melbourne, Australia
Turlough is a seasoned leader in natural capital, energy and resource management, with strong science and governance credentials, having held senior roles with global companies – Rio Tinto, Shell, Telstra, and First Solar, as well as NSW Government, and leading one of the largest volunteer organisations in Australia, as CEO Landcare NSW. He is currently a non-executive director and board advisor to community-based organisations, an Honorary Fellow at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Melbourne, and Member of the Advisory Council at the Faculty of Science (Sydney Institute of Agriculture), University of Sydney.
He spearheaded the NSW Government’s first Net Zero program, leveraging a $1 million investment into a national market mechanism for accelerating the supply and demand of low-emissions construction materials. As CEO of Landcare NSW, through building and supporting a team of high performing leaders and a network of more than 120 Landcare Coordinators and many more executive committee volunteers, and executing a governance transformation directed by his Board, he oversaw the management of almost $70 million, and secured $58.8 million in grassroots funding for the NSW Landcare Enabling Program—more than doubling NSW Government’s investment in community-led natural capital, sustainable agriculture, and natural resource management for the period to June 2027. His leadership, advocacy and implementing an organisation-wide governance uplift, contributed to the record government investment in community-led disaster preparation, climate adaptation, First Nations Landcare, and biodiversity conservation on private land, through community-led, government partnerships.
Panel Speaker II
Speaker III
Panel
Supply Chain Analytics and Optimisation
9:00 – 11:00 am (Thursday, November 26, 2026) – Room 1
Topics of interest (but not limited to)
Resilient and Risk-Aware Supply Chain Design, Multi-Objective Optimisation: Cost vs Service vs Sustainability, Real-Time and Digital Supply Chains, Inventory and Logistics Optimisation in the E-commerce Era, Data Challenges in Supply Chain Analytics, Human-in-the-Loop vs Autonomous Supply Chains, Advanced Optimisation Techniques in Practice, Supply Chain Analytics for Sustainability, Future of Supply Chain Optimisation.
Panel Chair:
Dr Spring Zhou
Associate Professor, School of Business
Faculty of Business and Law
University of Wollongong, Australia
Dr Quan (Spring) Zhou is an Associate Professor at School of Business, Faculty of Business and Law, University of Wollongong. She obtained a PhD in Operations and Supply Chain Management from University of Auckland in 2016 for her research in managing medical supplies in national reserves. Prior to joining University of Wollongong, Spring worked as a lecturer at Massey University (2016-2018) and a Research Fellow at University of Auckland (2016) in New Zealand. Her research interests are in supply chain management, non-profit operations, inventory management of perishable products, and agricultural value chains.
As a strong proponent of practice-inspired research, Spring is passionate about combining her research interests with practical needs. Spring has been actively involved in practice-driven, applied research. For example, her PhD project was motivated by the serious expiration problem in the medical reserve stocks. In that project, she studied rotation schemes and provided suggestions on managing the medical supplies, considering the perishability of long-life medical products. Spring has also worked with AgResearch in New Zealand to evaluate on-farm changes when delivering desirable credence attributes for agri-products and explore ways to motivate changes in land use practices.
Panel Speaker II
Panel Speaker III
David Aaron Karr, CPEng, FIIEA
President
Industrial Engineers Australia (IEA), Australia
David Graduated as an Industrial Engineer BSc (Eng Mech in the Industrial Option) in 1976 at University of Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, South Africa in 1976. He received a Graduate Diploma in Engineering at Wits 1979. David has worked in various Production and Industrial Engineering roles in manufacturing, service industries and consultancy for over 45 years in South Africa, Canada and Australia. He also has training experience as a lecturer(casual) at TAFE(technical college) for 13 years.
He has worked for Siemens(Routing Eng) and Colgate Palmolive(IE) (South Africa), Pirelli Cables(IE) and Canada Post(IE) (Canada), BOC Gases (Australia)(Production & Project Manager) across production quality, project management, supply chain management, design and improvements of production line and layouts of work area and data optimisation.
Industry experience included batch and process type manufacturing as well as large and small sites mainly with large multinational or national companies.
He has its own Business Consultancy undertaking passenger surveys, time and motion studies , setting up preventative maintenance systems for various clients and introduction of digitised autonomous processes. David has been very active in professional organisations in Canada (Canadian Society of Industrial Engineers (CSIE) and in Australia (Industrial Engineers Australia (IEA) and Engineers Australia (EA). He is a fellow and Federal President of Industrial Engineers Australia and Chartered Professional Engineer of Engineers Australia.
Panel Speaker IV
Panel Speaker V