Kingsman Prize 2008
Published 25 November 2008
The prize was established in memory of the long-standing scholar of Management Science, Professor Brian Kingsman. The 2008 has been awarded jointly to Management Science PhD graduates Konstantinos (Dinos) Kaparis and Kostas Selviaridis.
Dinos is described by his supervisor Adam Letchford as “the most able PhD student that he has ever had, writing a remarkable PhD dissertation”. In his dissertation, Dinos designed, implemented and tested several new algorithms for solving certain hard optimisation problems. The computational results are extensive and the thesis marks an important contribution to the field. The examiners expressed no hesitation in awarding the PhD subject to only minor corrections. The PhD research has led to the multiple publications, including one that is forthcoming in Mathematical Programming, a top-tier OR journal. Dinos has also co-authored several publications on a largely unrelated research topic. Dinos has recently been appointed to a permanent lecturing post at the University of Southampton.
Kostas’ dissertation examined the process of designing and managing business service outsourcing relationships. The work involved conducting in-depth case studies in close collaboration with two logistics service providers, one of whom (CEVA Logistics UK) partially funded the research. The work resulted in the development of a novel, inter-disciplinary conceptual framework for understanding and explaining the interactive and dynamic character of the design and management of outsourced business services. Supervisor Martin Spring praises “Kostas’ remarkable combination of wide reading, an ability to synthesise ideas from different areas and an ability independently to carry out complex and challenging empirical work.” The viva was very successful and the dissertation was accepted after minor corrections. Kostas has published two refereed journal papers with three more in the pipeline. Recently, Kostas was instrumental in setting up the collaborative relationship between LUMS and Oulu/Helsinki School of Economics
