EUROSIS Board

Board of Trustees

The Board of Trustees was set up to monitor the finances of the European Simulation Society, and to provide guidance in organizational and scientific endeavours of the society in a broader European and global context. At present nearly all Flemish Universities are represented in the Board as well as some major Flemish companies. The aim in the near future is to expand the Board to a national level. And in the following years to a European level in order to give it a truly European dimension.

Members of the Board

As some members of the board are stepping down some new members will appear here shortly

President

Prof. Gerrit Janssens (Mechelen, 1956) received degrees of M.Sc. in Engineering with Economy from the University of Antwerp (RUCA), Belgium, M.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Ghent (Ugent), Belgium, and Ph.D. from the Free University of Brussels (VUB), Belgium. After some years of work at General Motors Continental, Antwerp, he joined the University of Antwerp until the year 2000. Currently he is Professor of Operations Management and Logistics at the Hasselt University within the Faculty of Business Administration.

He also holds the CPIM certificate of the American Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS). During the last fifteen years he has been several times visiting faculty in universities in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, South-Africa and Zimbabwe. His main research interests include the development and application of operations research models in production and distribution logistics. His teaching is in the fields of logistics, distribution (physical distribution and retailing), simulation and operations research.

Treasurer

Veronique Limère is Assistant Professor at the Department of Business Informatics and Operations Management at Ghent University. She obtained a Master in Business Engineering from KULeuven (2004), an MBA from Universiteit Hasselt (2005) and a Ph.D. in Engineering (Industrial Engineering and Operations Research) from Universiteit Gent (2011). To sharpen her research skills, she spent some time (2009-2010) at the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering of Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research interests lie in facility logistics, material handling, operations research applications in production and logistics systems, and industrial engineering applications in health care.

She is author of several international scientific publications and regularly attends international conferences to present her research and keep up with the latest research in the field. Moreover, she is a member of the Belgian Society in Operations Research (SOGESCI-B.V.W.B.) and the international Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)

Secretary General

Philippe Geril (Ostend, 1958) is presently the executive director of ETI Ltd (The European Technology Institute), a company dedicated to promoting European research and development. He graduated as a (Licenciaat/Master) translator English Russian (1979) and subsequently with honours as an (Licenciaat/Master) interpreter English Russian (1980) from the Institut Libre Marie Haps in Brussels, Belgium.

After finishing his military service at GHQ in Brussels, he started work as a sales manager Belgium for Meatmarket NV in 1983. He moved to Superia NV later in 1983 where he was European assistant sales manager for the production department of industrial heating systems. He left the company in 1985 to become European Manager of Sportservice, a division of Snauwaert NV. In September of that same year he started work at Ghent University as project manager in Europe for the Society of Computer Simulation under the direction of Professor Ghislain Vansteenkiste. He stayed in that position till 1994, when he became the co-founder and executive director of SCS Europe Ltd. He resigned from the company as director in 2002. In 2003 he set up ETI Bvba (The European Technology Institute) and was instrumental in creating EUROSIS. He was an external scientific advisor for Ghent University from 2003-2006.

Since 1985, he has created and run over two hundred simulation and simulation related conferences in Europe, The Middle East, North-America and Asia, each of which have become a well-known and respected brand in their own right. (ESM, ESS, USER, EUROMEDIA, ECEC, FOODSIM, FUBUTEC, MESM, GAMEON, GAMEON-NA, NASTEC, GAMEON-ARABIA, GAMEON-ASIA, ASTEC, SCIFI-IT). He has edited over 200 scientific proceedings to date (the first of which was ESC'86 in 1986) and has edited several journals and newsletters (such as Simulation News Europe (1985-1990), Inderscience(2006-)) in the field of computer simulation.

Next to computer programming courses in BASIC, FORTRAN, DBase and PASCAL, he took a postgraduate course in Business Administration from VLEKHO in 1989 and extra language courses in Italian, Spanish and Japanese. He is now taking Arabic courses.

You can download his full CV here.

Board Members

Prof. Kenneth Sörensen (Antwerp, Belgium, 1974) graduated as a commercial engineer in information systems from the University of Antwerp in 1997. He obtained his PhD entitled ”A framework for robust and flexible optimisation using metaheuristics” from the University of Antwerp in 2003 and continued as a post-doctoral researcher at the UAntwerp. During 2006 and 2009, he worked as a postdoc researcher of the Flemish Fund for Scientific Research (FWO)at the Faculty of Engineering of the KULeuven. In 2009, Kenneth Sörensen was appointed as a Research Professor of the Faculty of Applied Economics of the University of Antwerp, a position he holds to date. Within this Faculty, he founded the ANT/OR research group, that focuses on applications of operations research. This research group has already delivered six finished PhDs, all under the supervision of Kenneth Sörensen, and currently consists of three professors and about ten PhD students.

Kenneth Sörensen has published a large number of articles in international refereed journals, and has presented his work at numerous scientific conferences. He is considered one of the world’s leading experts in thefield of metaheuristics. His main research interest lies in the application of advanced (metaheuristic) optimization methods and in the development andstudy of optimization methods.
Kenneth Sörensen is the founder and current coordinator of the EURO working group EU/ME
– the metaheuristics community, the largest online platform for researchers in metaheuristics
worldwide. He currently holds the position of Vice President 2 of EURO - The Association of
European Operational Research Societies. He is also associate editor of the Journal of Heuristics, the International Transactions in Operational Research, and 4OR - the Quarterly Journal of the French, Italian, and Belgian Operational Research Societies.

You can download his full CV here.

Pol T. Descamps (Kortrijk, 1935) has 44 years of professional experience in electronic engineering and industrial management. He currently is executive director of Pol T. Descamps & Partners VOF which concentrates on studies for economic, social & environmental sustainable development, on system dynamic modelling and on future assessment &- scenarios development and analysis, with active involvement in CEU DG INFSO ICT and Sustainable development R&D projects since 1982 where he was amongst others a Co-editor of the CEU TERRA 2000 World III bis ˜Insight Model".

He was with BARCO NV Kortrijk Belgium (worldwide 4000 p) between 1957-2000 in several technical and managerial and board capacities: making Multi-standard TV receivers, professional instruments, industrial electronic apparatus & components for electronic imaging & display systems for both the international civil and defence & security markets. He also founded the Barco department for control & management systems in the Textile industry. Till 2005 he was external Advisor Special Studies R & D.
Since 2000 he coordinates European Research collaboration at the Hogeschool West Vlaanderen Engineering College, where he established the new Systems Analysis and Simulation group and the Telepresence lab.

You can download his full CV here.

Filip Van Utterbeeck (Roeselare, 1972) is an associate military professor at the department of Mathematics of the Royal Military Academy (KMS-ERM) in Brussels. He graduated as a Polytechnical Engineer from the Royal Military Academy in 1995 and holds a Ph.D. in Engineering Science (K.U.Leuven and KMS-ERM, 2011).

From 1995 to 2002 Filip was a technical officer in the Air Defence Branch of the Belgian Air Force, first as Data Handling officer in the Control & Reporting Center in Glons, and later as Material Manager Air Defence Systems at the Directorate General Material Resources. Since 2002 he works in the Department of Mathematics (Chair of Applied Mathematics) of the Royal Military Academy where he teaches various courses in the fields of operations research, computer simulation and data mining. His main areas of research are in the application of optimization techniques and simulation and modelling to defence-related problems such as military manpower planning and medical disaster management. Filip is a member of the board of administration of the Belgian Operations Research Society (ORBEL) and a member of the NATO Science and Technology Organisation System Analysis and Studies panel (NATO STO SAS).

Hendrik Vanmaele has an engineering degree and a M.Sc in Industrial Management. He studied at the Cornell University (USA) and obtained a Ph.D. in Industrial Management.

As a professional consultant, Prof. Vanmaele is involved with several companies and public organizations for the modeling, analysis and redesign of business processes.
As an academic, Prof. Vanmaele is specialized in the application of simulation and optimization techniques supporting analysis and redesign exercises.

He is the author of many national and international publication on Supply Chain Management and Business Process Management.

Prof. Dr.ir.Dirk Cattrysse is master of science in civil engineering (K.U.Leuven, 1983), master of engineering in industrial management (K.U.Leuven, 1984), and holds a Ph.D. in industrial management (K.U.Leuven, 1990). He studied as a visiting fellow at the MIT Sloan school of management (USA, 1987-1988), where he did research in the area of applied operations research. He is professor at the K.U.Leuven and was visiting professor at several universities. He was also part-time appointed at the University of Stellenbosch (Zuid-Afrika, 1998-2004), department of Industrial Engineering. He was president (SOGESCI-B.V.W.B., 1998-1999) and is still member of the board of the Belgian OR-society. He is currently member of the board of the VIL (Flanders Institute for Logistics) and of the VLW (Traffic and logistics working group).

He is especially interested in applications of operations research and the development of decision support systems in the area of logistics (production planning, distribution and reverse logistics) and was advisor and assessor of several PhD thesisses in that area, and promotor of several projects (IWT, European, bilateral, …). He has published in journals like European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of the Operational Research Society, International Journal of Production Economics, International Journal of Production Research, Management Science, OR Spectrum, Key Engineering Materials, IIE Transactions, Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Journal of Advanced Materials Research, OR-Insight.

You can download his full CV here.

Danny Van Welden (Oudenaarde, 1962) holds a M.Sc degree in Physics, an engineering M.SC (civil engineer) in Applied Physics, a M.Sc in Statistics and a Ph.D. in Informatics. He worked for 10 years at the Department of Applied Mathematics, Biometrics and Process Control of Ghent University (on a project and as an assistant). He later returned to the Department of Control Engineering and Automation as a doctor-assistant.

During his academic carrier, he published in several journals and for international conferences. For the latter he served as session and track chairman and he was a major organiser of two symposia (national and European). Later he went on to a small data-mining company and returned to the university to help in a European project where data mining was an essential part. Nowadays, he works at the KBC (Kredietbank NV) as a senior risk advisor.