Student: Inês Ralheta Duarte (86775/D)

Title: Design and planning of sustainable and resilient pharmaceutical supply chains

Date: 28/03/2025

Time: 16h00

Location: Zoom (Passcode: 408010)

CAT members:

Chairperson: Professor Susana Isabel Carvalho Relvas (IST)

Supervisor: Professor Ana Paula Ferreira Dias Barbosa Póvoa (IST)

Co-supervisor: ProfessorBruna Alexandra Elias Mota (IST)

Co-supervisor: Professor Tânia Rute Xavier de Matos Pinto Varela (IST)

External Member: Professor Maria Sameiro Faria Brandão Soares Carvalho (UMinho)

External Member: Doctor Catarina Moreira Marques (INESC TEC)

Brief description of the research work: This PhD project explores the integration of sustainability and resilience in the design and planning of pharmaceutical supply chains (PSCs). While PSCs play a critical role in public health, their complexity presents significant decision-making challenges, further heightened by the need to balance economic, environmental, and social sustainability objectives in an uncertain environment. To address this, the research develops optimization-based decision-support tools that integrate these three pillars into strategic and tactical decisions. The project is structured around building a multi-objective modeling framework, extending it to incorporate social concerns, and further enhancing it to account for uncertainty and resilience. Through case studies, the approach is validated to ensure practical applicability, providing insights for decision-makers aiming to design and plan more sustainable and resilient PSCs.

Research Unit: Centre for Management Studies of IST (CEGIST)