René (M.) B.M. de Koster is a professor of logistics and operations management at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University in the Netherlands. He chairs the Department of Technology and Operations Management. He holds a PhD from Eindhoven University of Technology. Prof de Koster’s research interests focus on warehousing, material handling, container terminal operations, behavioral operations and sustainable logistics. He wrote and edited several books and published over 200 papers in various academic journals. He holds the honorary Francqui chair for Hasselt University in 2018 and was recently mentioned as “the most influential researcher” in material handling.