Our Team
Professor Benny Tjahjono
Principal Investigator
Dr. David Bek
Co-Investigator
Dr. Jordon Lazell
Lecturer of Marketing
Professor Benny Tjahjono
Benny Tjahjono is Professor of Supply Chain Management, and also a co-leader of the Sustainable Production and Consumption cluster at the Centre for Business in Society. His overarching research area includes Sustainable Operations and Supply Chain Management, in particular, the exploration of Circular Economy principles in manufacturing and supply chains. He has a vested interest in ensuring the achievement of the triple sustainability objectives, ‘doing good for people, planet and profit’.
His research track record has been demonstrated by winning and successfully delivering several research grants from EPSRC, ESRC, InnovateUK, European Union, overseas funding agencies and directly from the UK industry. He was a member of a consortium consisting of seven universities in Europe recently being awarded the Horizon2020 MSCA Innovative Training Network aiming to formulate the service-oriented business for the European Circular Economy. His most recent research grant was funded by the Academy of Medical Sciences’ Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) in the area of Circular Food Supply Chain. Currently he is leading three research projects, one is funded by ESRC in the area of Social Innovation of Bioplastics and the others are funded by EIT RawMaterials (to investigate the recovery of metals in façade industry) and Erasmus+ (to equip engineering students with entrepreneurial skills).
Representing Coventry, he is one of the founding members of the newly established UK-Indonesia Consortium for Interdisciplinary Sciences (UKICIS) with an aim of harnessing the research and knowledge transfer activities between the two countries, in the topical areas of resilience and climate change.
Dr. David Bek
Dr David Bek is a Reader in Sustainable Economies and co-leader of the Sustainable Production and Consumption Cluster in the Centre for Business in Society . David has extensive experience of undertaking research into sustainability within horticultural supply chains, especially cut flowers. He has worked alongside organisations in the fruit, wine and flower sectors in South Africa, to develop training courses and monitoring and evaluation tools to promote enhanced sustainability in practice. He has undertaken work with the UK horticultural sector exploring the sustainability impacts of plastics and growing media. David is currently involved in a project investigating the impacts of Covid-19 upon the resilience of cut-flower supply chains (funded through the UK Department for International Development), whilst he is leading a project funded by the Dutch Sustainability Initiative (IDH) which is seeking to identify certification and assurance mechanisms for promoting sustainability in the global wildflower harvesting sector.
Dr. Jordon Lazell
Dr. Jordon Lazell is a Lecturer of Marketing at Essex Business School, University of Essex. His research interests lie in the area of food waste, specifically food consumption, waste and mitigation behaviours of consumers as well as food waste within retail supply chains. Jordon is a co-editor of the first Routledge Handbook of Food Waste and is also co-founder and administrator of the International Food Loss and Food Waste Studies Group, a research platform for academics and practitioners operating in this area.
Dr. Macarena Beltran
Dr Macarena Beltran is a Research Assistant at the University of Coventry. Her training in the field of Sustainability came from her PhD at Newcastle University, where she studied how the interactions of physical and occupants’ behavioural factors intervene in the energy demand. She has also worked evaluating the impact of the OFS related-projects and with private companies in the study of consumer behaviour and the evaluation of supply chains. Dr Beltran also holds an MA in Planning and Environment Research at Newcastle University, a Master in Marketing and Business at IEDE-Chile, Industrial Engineering and BSc at University of Santiago, Chile.