• Pierre Cariou

Pierre Cariou is a Full Professor of Maritime Economics at KEDGE Business School (France). He previously served as Professor of Maritime Affairs at the World Maritime University (Sweden) from 2004 to 2010, was a visiting research scholar at Cornell University (USA) in 2021, and held the position of Associate Professor in Economics at the University of Nantes (France) from 2000 to 2004. His main research interests include shipping and port economics as well as maritime decarbonization, areas in which he has published more than 90 academic articles. He is listed among the top 2% of researchers in the Stanford ranking. He is also a member of the porteconomics.eu research platform, served as Director of Research at KEDGE Business School from 2015 to 2017, and has twice held the position of Vice President of the International Association of Maritime Economists.

• Christos Kontovas

Christos Kontovas is a Reader in Sustainable Maritime Transportation and Logistics at Liverpool John Moores University, UK. He holds a Diploma in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering and a Ph.D. in Maritime Safety and Environmental Protection from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece. His research focuses on sustainable shipping, maritime economics, logistics, and the environmental and societal impacts of maritime transport. He has a particular interest in maritime economics and has been following the activities of IAME since attending the 2010 IAME  conference in Lisbon. Christos has contributed to numerous European Union research projects and has participated in international maritime policymaking through involvement with the International Maritime Organisation (IMO). He has authored more than 75 peer-reviewed publications and is consistently ranked among the world’s top 2% of researchers according to the Stanford/Elsevier ranking.

• Gabriel Fuentes

Gabriel Fuentes is a faculty member at the Norwegian School of Economics, specialising in maritime analytics, with research focused on data-driven approaches to improve maritime transport, port operations, and logistics systems. He has contributed actively to the International Association of Maritime Economists community, including serving as Conference Director for IAME 2025 in Bergen. In this role, he helped coordinate the international conference, contributed to securing substantial funding, and supported initiatives that strengthened engagement across the maritime research community. As part of IAME 2025, Gabriel also helped organise the first Maritime Analytics Workshop for young researchers, creating a dedicated space for early-career scholars to develop skills, exchange ideas, and connect with senior academics and practitioners. As a candidate for the IAME Board, Gabriel would bring an active and modern research profile, proven experience in organising major IAME initiatives, and a strong commitment to supporting young researchers, widening participation, and strengthening engagement across the IAME community.

• María Lorena García Alonso

María Lorena is a member of the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Oviedo, Spain. Through the completion of her PhD thesis, focused on Maritime Economics, she specialised in the analysis of inter-port competition and the spatial distribution of maritime traffic flows. Throughout her academic career, María Lorena has participated in several national and international research projects, supervised doctoral theses, published in internationally recognised academic journals, and taken an active part in numerous academic conferences, particularly those organised by the International Association of Maritime Economists (IAME). After many years as a member of IAME, she now wishes to take a step forward and formally submit her candidacy for the Council. She does so in the firm belief that her academic and professional experience would allow her to contribute constructively to the excellent work that IAME has been undertaking. In this regard, she believes it is both timely and worthwhile to explore new approaches that enhance the added value that membership offers to its members.

• Manolis Kavussanos

Manolis Kavussanos is Professor at Athens University of Economics and Business(AUEB), Greece. He is the founder (and Director for 10 years) of the MSc program in International Shipping, Finance and Management(ISFM) and the Laboratory for ISFM at AUEB. He has been for 5 years Director of the MSc and PhD programs in Accounting and Finance at AUEB. He co-launched and directed the MSc in Trade, Logistics and Finance at Bayes Business School, London, until joining AUEB.

He has been: elected member of IAME Council, of BoD of Hellenic Institute of History of Commercial Shipping, member of the editorial boards of international scientific journals, of the award committees for academic and professional prizes/scholarships. He is a recipient of teaching awards at Bayes and AUEB, has held posts as professor of finance and shipping in universities in the UK, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Singapore, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Greece and Cyprus.

He has provided consultancy services and executive education to private companies, national and international organisations, organised international scientific conferences, published extensively in international scientific journals, conference proceedings and books. His work gained awards for its quality, is financed by public and private sector organisations, companies and foundations and has received thousands of citations by fellow scientists.

Since 1992 he has worked in developing the area of risk analysis and management in shipping and is co-author of four books in this area and in shipping finance, including the leading reference books for academia and the industry, ‘Freight Derivatives and Risk Management in Shipping’ and the ‘International Handbook of Shipping Finance’. According to Stanford University publications, he has been classified in the top 2% of scientists internationally in his field of expertise.

• Mychal Langenus

Prof. Dr. Mychal Langenus (MSc and PhD in Applied Economic Sciences, Solvay Business School, Vrije Universiteit Brussel) is an Associate Professor of Management and Strategy at the Solvay Business School of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). He teaches courses in management, strategy, and business ethics, and serves as co-coordinator of the internship programme. His scholarly work has been published in peer-reviewed academic journals, focusing on stakeholder relationships, strategic management, and sustainability. He is an active IAME member and currently serves as Treasurer of the Association. In this role, he has worked intensively with the IAME Council, Secretary, and President over the past two years, contributing to the Association’s financial and organisational governance. He has also been closely involved in the IAME Membership Survey, providing him with a comprehensive and data-informed perspective on member needs and the Association’s future development. These experiences position him well to contribute effectively as a member of the IAME Council. In addition, he actively participates in the Ports Performance Research Network (PPRN).

• Louise Lu Li

Dr. Louise Lu Li is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Logistics and Maritime Studies (LMS) at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where she also obtained her Ph.D. degree. Her pioneering research centres on integrated Sea-Air-Low-Altitude transport systems, with a strong, definitive focus on maritime networks, port-shipping-city coordination, and resilience governance. She specialises in leveraging maritime big data through econometrics and network analysis methods to tackle complex global logistics challenges. Her academic excellence was recognised globally as she won the 2nd Thesis Award of the 9th MEL PhD Competition in 2025. Dr. Li has published 10 JCR Q1 journal papers (e.g., Transportation Research Part A/D, Journal of Transport Geography, Transport Policy, Ocean & Coastal Management), including 7 as first or corresponding author. She is deeply committed to IAME and aims to bring fresh, vital energies, quantitative insights, and stronger youth representation to the Council. She would be deeply honoured to receive your trust and vote to advance our association together.

• Ziaul Huque Munim

Ziaul Haque Munim is a Professor of Shipping and Logistics at the University of South-Eastern Norway – Campus Vestfold. His main research interests include maritime logistics, autonomous shipping, supply chain management, machine learning, and learning analytics. He holds a PhD degree from the University of Agder in Norway, a Master of Engineering from Novia University of Applied Sciences in Finland, and another Master of Science degree from Vienna University of Economics and Business in Austria. Professor Munim is a well-known scholar in the maritime transport field and is listed in the world’s top 2% scientists list. He has received several best paper awards at IAME conferences, and his research has appeared in leading maritime, management, and engineering journals. He serves on the editorial board of several reputed journals.

• Adolf Ng

Prof. Adolf NG received DPhil from University of Oxford, UK. He had teaching experience in Canada, Hong Kong, and the Netherlands. He excels in the research and teaching of transport economics, climate change adaptation planning, infrastructure planning and management, institutional and organisational change, supply chain resilience, and intelligent supply chain analytics. His works exert significant influence, as evidenced by a recent academic study recognising him as one of the world’s top five scholars in maritime research. He is also listed on the Stanford/Elsevier Top 2% Scientists List and included in Research.com’s Best Scientists in the World Ranking. He has held the position of Council Member for the International Association of Maritime Economists (IAME) and serves as an editor for prestigious academic journals in transport and maritime research, including Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, Maritime Policy & Management, and The Asian Journal of Shipping and Logistics. Additionally, he is the Founding Director of the International Centre for Resilient Supply Chains at BNBU.

• Jean-Paul Rodrigue

Dr. Rodrigue’s research interests primarily focus on transportation and economics as they relate to logistics, intermodal transportation, and global freight distribution. He has published extensively on topics, including maritime transport systems and logistics, global supply chains, gateways, and transport corridors. He has authored 9 books, 40 book chapters, more than 60 peer-reviewed papers, numerous reports, and delivered more than 200 conferences and seminar presentations, mostly at the international level. He ranks among the top 2% of the most-cited scholars worldwide and among the top 100 in the field of transport and logistics. His co-authored paper on port regionalisation and the development of port/hinterland supply chains became one of the world’s most-cited papers on maritime transport. His high-impact textbook, The Geography of Transport Systems, now in its sixth edition, is acknowledged as the world’s most widely used and cited transportation textbook. His co-authored textbook, Port Economics, Management and Policy, was published in 2022, with the second edition released in 2026, and is regarded as the world’s most influential and frequently cited port textbook. In 2019, he was the recipient of the Edward L. Ullman Award for outstanding contribution to the field of transport geography by the American Association of Geographers. In 2022, Dr. Rodrigue was appointed a Distinguished Fellow at the Hagler Institute for Advanced Study / Department of Maritime Administration, Texas A&M University.

• Ryuichi Shibasaki

Dr. Ryuichi Shibasaki is an Associate Professor of the Department of Systems Innovation, School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo since 2017. Before that, he served at the National Institute for Land and Infrastructure Management (NILIM) under the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism of Japan (MLIT), and at the Overseas Coastal Area Development Institute of Japan (OCDI) for 15 years. He currently serves as an associate editor for Maritime Policy & Management, International Journal of Shipping and Transport Logistics, Asian Transport Studies, Regional Studies in Marine Science, and Journal of the Japan Society of Naval Architects and Ocean Engineers, as well as an editorial board member of WMU Journal of Maritime Affairs and The Asian Journal of Shipping and Logistics. He is also a co-representative of the TLOG conference series and a permanent board member of the Japan Society of Logistics and Shipping Economics. He has received multiple awards at the IAME (2014 and 2020) and other conferences, and published edited books “Global Logistics Network Modelling and Policy: Quantification and Analysis for International Freight” (Elsevier, 2020) and “Maritime Big Data: Shipping and Logistics Analysis using Automatic Identification System Data” (CRC Press, forthcoming).

• Alessio Tei

Alessio Tei, PhD, is Associate Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Genoa’s Department of Economics and a board member of Vado Logistics Park, Italy. He previously served as Lecturer in Maritime Economics at Newcastle University (UK) and has held adjunct teaching roles at Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences, the University of Pisa, and the Naval Academy of Livorno. His research focuses on maritime and transport economics, innovation, regional development, mobility planning, and transport efficiency. He has contributed to major national and international projects, including Italy’s National Logistics Plan, H2020 and HorizonEurope initiatives, and OECD consultancies. He currently leads two Horizon Europe projects on shipping innovation and a national project on AI and digital solutions for port-city flows. He coordinates the ME4F Lab. He is an active member of IAME and WCTRS, and he is currently a member of the IAME council.

• George Vaggelas

Dr. George K. Vaggelas is Assistant Professor at the Department of Maritime Studies of the University of Piraeus, Greece. He has previously held academic positions at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and the University of the Aegean. An expert in port economics, management, and maritime policy, he combines academic research with extensive industry and regulatory experience. He has served as Advisor to the President and CEO of Thessaloniki Port Authority and as a member of the Greek Regulatory Authority for Ports. He is also a founding member of PortEconomics, a leading platform for knowledge exchange on port and maritime issues. Dr. Vaggelas has led and contributed to numerous European projects on ports, shipping, and transport systems and has published extensively in international journals and conferences. He holds a PhD in Port Economics, Management and Policy from the University of the Aegean and serves on the Board of the International Association of Maritime Economists (IAME).

• Gordon Wilmsmeier

Prof. Dr. Gordon Wilmsmeier is the Director of the Hapag-Lloyd Centre for Shipping and Global Logistics (CSGL) at the Kühne Logistics University (KLU), Germany and holds the Kühne Professorial Chair in Logistics at the School of Management, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia. At the same time Gordon is an honorary professor of Maritime Geography at the University of Applied Sciences in Bremen, Germany. Previously, Gordon held positions at the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (UN-ECLAC), Chile (2011-2017) and Edinburgh Napier University’s Transport Research Institute (TRI), Scotland (2007-2011). He also worked as a consultant for UN-ECLAC, UNCTAD, UN-OHRLLS, the World Bank, Adelphi Research, JICA, IDB, CAF, OAS. His research bridges policy impact in the fields of port governance, maritime economics, decarbonization, transport geography, and waterborne electromobility. He has published over 100 book chapters, journal papers, institutional publications and working papers. His recent books include: Geographies of Maritime Transport and Maritime Mobilities. In 2022, his work on climate change adaptation was cited in the IPCC report. Currently, he is the Academic Director of the Fundación Conecta Logística, Chile, leader of the global Port Performance Research Network (PPRN), member of the International Association of Maritime Economists (IAME), the WCTRS Special Interest Group – Intermodal Freight, International Geographical Union (IGU) Transport & Geography Commission, and PortEconomics.

• Ran (Angel) Yan

Dr. Ran (Angel) Yan is an Assistant Professor of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, since March 2023. Dr Yan was also a joint Senior Scientist in Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC) at Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR, Singapore) from May 2024 to May 2025. Dr. Yan obtained her Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2020 and 2022, respectively. Dr. Yan’s research interests include big data analytics in maritime studies, maritime decarbonisation, maritime digitalisation. Dr. Yan has published more than 80 SCI/SSCI indexed research papers in top-tier transportation, maritime, and energy journals, such as Communications Engineering (Nature Portfolio; Editors’ Choice 2025), Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, Transportation Research Part A/B/C/D/E, Computers and Operations Research, Computers & Industrial Engineering, Applied Energy, Energy, Journal of Cleaner Production, and Reliability Engineering & System Safety. She is among the World’s Top 2% Scientists for the year 2025. She is the co-chair of the IAME 2026 Conference. She has secured over SGD 2 million in research funding as Principal Investigator (PI) from the Ministry of Education (Singapore), NRF Singapore, A*STAR, COSCO, and NTU, supporting research on maritime digitalisation and decarbonisation.

• Zhongzhen Yang

YANG Zhongzhen, Professor and Doctoral Supervisor, Ningbo University. A member of the Sixth and Seventh Discipline Review Group of the State Council of China, a member of the Steering Committee for Teaching of Transportation Engineering of Chinas’ Ministry of Education, an associate editor of Transport Policy, and an editorial board member of Maritime Economics & Logistics. He is one of the top 2% lifetime influential scientists in the world, and an external director of Zhejiang Port Group.
He is mainly engaged in the research of port and shipping logistics management and engineering, integrated transport system optimization, regional logistics network design, urban logistics, land use and traffic modeling.
He has presided over six National Natural Science Foundation of China projects (two key programs, four general programs), two doctoral projects of China’s Ministry of Education, andone humanities and social science project of China’s Ministry of Education.

• Wei (Vera) Zhang

Dr Wei (Vera) Zhang is a Senior Lecturer and Course Coordinator at Maritime and Logistics Management, Australian Maritime College, University of Tasmania, Australia. She completed her PhD in Maritime Studies from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her PhD thesis was awarded the third place in the Palgrave McMillian Competition for best PhD theses in Maritime Economics and Logistics in 2016. She has led and participated many national and international research grants such as the grant ‘The impact of innovative Industry 4.0 technologies on port resilience’ funded by the International Association of Maritime Universities and the grant ‘Pre-conditions for the development of offshore wind energy in Australia’ funded by Blue Economy CRC with the fund over AUD 1 million. She also served in many international journal editorial boards and guest editor of the journals such as Maritime Business Review. She has a good record of publications including publications on international journals such as Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice and International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, and book chapters such as chapters in the books of Geographies of Maritime Transport: Transport, Mobilities and Spatial Change published by Edward Elgar Publishing and Maritime Business and Economics: Asian Perspectives by Routledge.

• Yusheng Zhou

Dr. Yusheng Zhou (Citations: 1142; h-idex: 16) is an Assistant Professor at Department of Logistics and Maritime Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Dr. Zhou obtained his Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Maritime Studies from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, in 2019 and 2024 respectively. He was awarded with Singapore Maritime & Port Authority Gold Medal cum Cash Award. His specializations include but are not limited to ESG in Shipping Management and its relevant Risk Management, Inclusive and Equitable Maritime Development, Sustainable Maritime Cluster Development, and Autonomous Ship. Dr Zhou has published research papers on Transportation Research Part D, Marine Policy, Transport Policy, Maritime Policy & Management, Journal of Cleaner Production, Reliability Engineering & System Safety, Ocean and Coastal management, Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, and International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. He has presented his research on IAME conferences in Busan (Korea), Long Beach (USA), and Bergen (Norway) in 2022, 2023, and 2025 respectively. He has served as a reviewer for Transportation Research Part E, Transportation Research Part D, Marine Policy, Transport Policy, Maritime Economics & Logistics, and Maritime Policy & Management. He is currently a review editor of Journal of Frontiers in Marine Science.