The HUMLOG Best Master Thesis Award is won by alumnus Lisa Swinkels for her thesis Frequency Determination Policies for Mobile Healthcare Delivery. She obtained her Master’s degree summa cum laude in Econometrics and Management Science (specialisation: Operations Research and Quantitative Logistics), in December 2018.
The prize consists of € 500 and an invitation to attend the academic Conference EurOMA in June 2019 in Helsinki. Lisa is also invited to submit an article to the Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management and to write an article about her thesis on HUMLOG's blog.
Lisa’s thesis aims to increase the effectiveness of mobile family planning units that travel from village to village in developing countries to serve people with often no other access to family planning. The thesis develops guidelines for mobile units on how to divide the limited number of days available over the villages such that as many clients as possible can be reached. The effectiveness of policies in a practical context is illustrated by applying them to a case study for mobile teams of Marie Stopes Uganda. Her analyses show that simple planning policies can increase the total number of clients reached by over 8%.
Each year the HUMLOG Institute rewards a Master’s student who has been writing the best thesis in Humanitarian Logistics. Nominated master's theses need to fulfill the criterion of being a "research-based master's thesis with a good grade from a recognised university". A submitted thesis has to be completed the year prior to the nomination.
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About the HUMLOG Institute
The Finnish Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Research Institute (HUMLOG Institute) acts as a focal point for researchers and partly for practitioners in Humanitarian Logistics to conduct high-quality research on logistics and supply chain management in humanitarian and development context. It is a joint institute between Hanken School of Economics and National Defence University of Finland (NDU).