Fellows

Fellows are the honorary members of Beta and will promote on the one hand high quality research within the scope of Beta and on the other Beta as a research school and research community at international research events and in their contacts with society, thereby contributing to an excellent research climate at the constituting institutions of Beta. Fellows are appointed as fellows for their lifetime.

Prof.dr.ir. J.W.M. Bertrand

Will Bertrand was the first scientific director of Beta. He directed Beta from the early nineties until 2002 with full dedication. He is the designer of Beta and made it into a quantitative, model-based research school. He has been a fiery proponent of a research school in Operations Management including the disciplines of Information and Communication Technology and Organizational Psychology. Will Bertrand made fundamental contributions to the area of Operations Management, including a generic hierarchical framework for planning and control that has been extensively applied in practical situations, and the concept of workload control to control throughput times in complex manufacturing environments. By now, workload control is a standard topic in textbooks on Operations Management.

Prof.dr. A. van Harten

Aart van Harten was one of the founders of Beta. He strongly stimulated the role of Beta within the University of Twente. He supervised a wide range of PhD projects within the Beta research field, including production planning, order acceptance, maintenance optimization, spare part logistics, transportation optimization and reverse logistics. He had several managerial positions with Beta as well as at the University of Twente, he was research director of the Department of Technology and Management at TU/e and a member of the management team of Beta, CPLOM and CTIT. For the PhDs and the researchers he collaborated with, he was always a source of enthusiasm and bright ideas. He has acted as first supervisor to PhD students. As a versatile researcher, he has many scientific publications ranging from theoretical mathematics to case studies in operations management. Some of his publications are in the very top of his field. Aart van Harten passed away on 13 December, 2006.

Prof.dr.ir. A.G. de Kok

Ton de Kok has been strongly involved in the realization of Beta. From the mid ’90s he was member of the Beta Executive Board. In 2003 he succeeded Will Bertrand as scientific director of Beta. Under his direction Beta a valuable quality improvement took place, partly due to the establishment of the Beta Academic Council. Furthermore he put a lot of time and energy into increasing the synergy between the parties involved in Beta. He cooperated with researchers of other Beta groups in various PhD projects and several larger research projects. As a scientist Ton de Koks contributions to the field of supply chain planning are considerably. He was the founder of a new practical usable supply chain planning concept that includes demand uncertainty. In 2004 he was one of the finalists of the prestigious Franz Edelman Award. Ton received a STW grant to find out whether it is possible to commercialize the scientific inventions mentioned above.

Prof.dr. J.K. Lenstra

Jan Karel Lenstra has been strongly involved in the realization of the Beta Research School that led to KNAW recognition in 1998. His support of Beta was of vital importance to the department of Mathematics and Computer Science and the Executive Board at TU/e. He held several positions on Beta’s board for over five years. He actively set up cooperation between the Departments of Mathematics and Computer Science and Technology Management through the supervision of joint PhD students. It would be hard to overstate his contribution to the field of Operations Research in the last three decades. He has held several editor-in-chief positions of top journals and has numerous publications in top journals. He has collaborated with many, if not all, of the leading researchers in combinatorial optimization.

Prof.dr. J. Wessels

Since the late eighties Jaap Wessels was a passionate supporter of further cooperation between the departments of Mathematics and Industrial Engineering of the TU/e. Together with Will Bertrand he started the post graduate education program ‘Logistic Management Systems’ and the Beta Research School. Due to his efforts, Operations Management became an accepted research field at TU/e. Jaap Wessels has made numerous scientific contributions to the fields of Operations Research and Operations Management. And even more importantly, his PhD offspring consist of many leading researchers in the field. Jaap Wessels passed away on July 30, 2009.

Prof.dr. W.H.M. Zijm

Henk Zijm has been involved with Beta from its inception in 1995. He held several managerial positions with Beta for about 10 years and he was an eminent advocate of Beta at the Centre for Telematics and Information Technology as well as the University of Twente’s Executive Board. He developed and supervised PhD projects in cooperation with researchers from Mathematics and Industrial Engineering and was a key player in bringing both disciplines together within Beta. He has published on a wide variety of subjects, including combinatorial optimization, Markov decision theory and hierarchical planning and control. His research has stimulated many researchers to work with industry on challenging research problems with a high practical relevance.