Professor J.A.A. van der Veen (1959) has been named Professor of Supply Chain Optimisation in the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) as of 1 February 2009. Van der Veen will also become director of the executive programmes of the Amsterdam Business School of the UvA.

Jack van der Veen conducts research into the cooperation of various entities in the supply chain of products and services. His work particularly focuses on the various ways in which supply chain management can lead to an improved situation for all participating entities and, moreover, to better quality at lower cost for the end-user. An example is the coordination of decisions among chain partners by the introduction of contract mechanisms such as revenue sharing or profit sharing. In addition to the hard (economic) aspects of collaboration among chain partners, Van der Veen is also very interested in the influence on collaboration of "soft" aspects such as corporate culture, trust and leadership. The chair is actively seeking ways to apply the various Supply Chain Management business models in practical situations, such as in the Dutch construction sector.

In 1986 Van der Veen graduated cum laude in Econometrics from the University of Groningen (RUG) and in 1992 he earned his PhD - also from the RUG - in Operations Research with the thesis Special Cases of the Travelling Salesman Problem with Various Objective Functions.

Since 1990 Van der Veen has held several positions at Nyenrode Business Universiteit. Since 2000 he has been Professor of Supply Chain Optimisation. Furthermore, as vice-dean he has been responsible in the past years for the post-graduate Master's programmes in business administration and management (including a number of MBA study programmes) and for the business administration research programmes.