Alena Otto holds the Chair of Management Science/Operations and Supply Chain Management at the University of Passau.

Alena Otto’s research interests focus on operations management in companies that are undergoing digital transformation. The advent of new technologies and a growing sophistication in customer demands have significantly increased the complexity of production and logistical processes. This may, for instance, involve connecting robots, machines and humans in a network, to allow them to closely interact with each other and at least partially adjust their actions in real time. Alena Otto elaborates suitable data-driven operations-planning and optimisation approaches. Her research is interdisciplinary, carried out in cooperation with experts in engineering and data analytics.

Alena Otto has authored numerous publications, which have been published in renowned, highly-ranked academic journals. She is an associate editor for OMEGA – The International Journal of Management Science and regularly organises streams and sessions at prominent international conferences in operations research. For her research, she has received a number of prestigious academic and business awards.

Professor Otto gained her postdoctoral Habilitation qualification at the University of Siegen, where she previously worked as a postdoctoral fellow and managed the Chair of Business Administration/Quantitative Planning in an interim professor  capacity. Alena Otto  obtained her doctorate in Management Science with highest honours at the University of Jena. Before starting her doctoral studies, she spent several years in strategic consultancy working on different projects in the Ukraine, Germany and Russia. She received her master’s degree in economics at the EERC in Kyiv (Ukraine) and her bachelor’s degree in economics at the Belarusian State University in Minsk (Belarus), focusing on quantitative methods during her studies.

Alena Otto comes from Belarus, and is married with two children.