Dr Nicoleta Tipi

Professional biography

Dr Nicoleta S Tipi is senior lecturer in the area of Operations and Supply Chain, Department for People and Organisations, Faculty of Business and Law, at The Open University Business School (UK) since October 2020.

Prior this, Nicoleta was a senior lecturer at The University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield Business School for over 16 years. During her time at Huddersfield, she gained experience in teaching modules in Management Science Modelling, Statistics and Simulation, Logistics Operations Techniques, Supply Chain Modelling, Quantitative Research Methods, Global Logistics and Business Research Methods.  At Huddersfield, Nicoleta was Course Leader to a range of different courses at Masters and PhD level (CL for MSc Global Logistics and Supply Chain Management, CL for the Post Graduate Certificate in Research Methods for PhD researchers and CL for the MSc in Business Intelligence and Analytics). During this time, Nicoleta has successfully supervised over 130 Undergraduates’ projects and 65 Masters’ projects.

During 2021 to 2024, Nicoleta was the Director of Research Degrees Programme for the Faculty of Business and Law at the Open University and the Deputy Chair of the OU Research Degrees Committee. 

Nicoleta acts as a PhD research supervisor for a number of projects in the area of supply chain modelling and simulation, supply chain performance measurement systems, supply chain product design and sustainability. To date, Nicoleta has 19 successful PhD completions. Students who completed their research under her supervision are now in academic positions at universities in different parts of the world (UK, Greece, Nigeria and Egypt) as well as managers in manufacturing companies (UK, Greece and China). 

Nicoleta has been a PhD and DBA research examiner for over 10 theses at different universities in the UK (University of Plymouth, University of Newcastle, University of Manchester and University of Huddersfield). She acted as MSc external examiner at Royal Holloway, University of London and MSc validation panel member at the University of Westminster and University of Huddersfield.

She has considerable industrial experience, having spent over three years in Unilever, Home and Personal Care Europe as a Supply Chain Modelling Manager. During the time spent in industry, she was able to evaluate how supply chain modelling, business analytics, master data management and ERP systems are developed, implemented and applied in industry. Prior this Nicoleta started her research career in Cranfield School of Management (UK), Transport and Logistics Department as a Research Fellow.

She received a PhD from The University of Sheffield (UK), Department of Automatic Control and System Engineering in the area of On-line scheduling and heuristic control of production and supply chain systems. She has an MA in Professional Development (Higher Education Practice) from the University of Huddersfield (UK). Nicoleta graduated with an engineering (Ing) degree in Computing and Automatic Control Engineering from The Technical University of Cluj-Napoca (Romania).

Nicoleta is a Senior Fellow of The Higher Education Academy (SFHEA), a Chartered Member of the Chartered Institute of Transport and Logistics (CMILT) and committee member to the CILT West and North Yorkshire Group.  

Nicoleta received Recognition of Supervisory Practice by UK Council for Graduate Education - UKCGE Recognised Research Supervisor .

Research interests

Nicoleta’s area of research includes topics in: Supply Chain Analytics and Modelling; Modelling and Simulation; Supply Chains Performance Measurement Systems, all with the view to reach a Sustainable and Resilient Supply Chain System.

Nicoleta has published over 70 articles in journals and conference proceedings. Currently, she has material published in journals such as European Journal of Operational Research, Supply Chain Management: an International Journal, Journal of Rural Studies, Computers and Industrial Engineering, International Journal of Systems Science, International Journal of Sustainable Engineering, International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Maritime Policy and Management, Maritime Economics and Logistics journal and others. 

Nicoleta is interested in supervising PhD researchers. For further information on funding, eligibility and how to prepare a research application  please use the following link.  

Teaching interests

Nicoleta's teaching experience in the O&SCM area is focused on different topics, such as supply chain management, logistics planning techniques and applications, supply chain planning and control, management science modelling, statistics and simulation, supply chain management and operations management (at UG and MSc levels), global logistics (at UG level) and business research methods (at doctoral and MSc level).

At the OU, she has teaching responsibilities on:

·       B126 (2024 to 2025) - Business Data Analytics and Decision Making (UG level, 1^st year) as module team member on production post-launch

·       BB849 (2020 to 2024) – Supply Chain Management (MBA) as module chair and module team member in presentation, and module team member in production (2024 – 2025)

·       B207 (2020 to 2021) - Shaping Business Opportunities (UG level, 2nd year) as module team member in presentation 

·       BXY130/330 (2020 to 2021) – Work-based modules within the Chartered Manager Degree Apprenticeship (CMDA) as module team member in presentation

·       FPBLR (2021 to 2024) - Foundations and Practice for Business and Law Research (PhD level module) as module team chair, and module team member (2024 to now)