Prof. Xu Zhou is currently a Professor in the Department of Logistics and Maritime Studies, Faculty of Business, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in 2007 from the Industrial Engineering and Data Analytics Department of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Master degree in 2003 from the Computer Science Department of the National University of Singapore, and Bachelor degree in 2002 from the Computer Science Department of Tsinghua University. His research focuses on operations research, intelligent optimisation, and their applications to problems in logistics, transportation, shipping, and supply chain management. He has published more than forty articles in mainly premier journals, including Operations Research, INFORMS Journal on Computing, Production and Operations Management, Transportation Science, Transportation Research Part B, Naval Research Logistics, Interfaces, Communications of the ACM, etc. His research works have been translated into a strategic procurement and bid optimisation system, which helps a global electronic company to source transportation services for thousands of lanes in the world.