Foresight’s Editorial team and Advisory Board make it possible for us to bring our readers the very best combination of research from top academics and insights from the experience of leading business forecasters in the field.
Michael Gilliland, Editor-in-Chief
Mike Gilliland retired from SAS in 2021, and at the end of 2022, succeeded Foresight’s founding editor, Len Tashman, as Editor-in-Chief. At SAS he served 17 years in product management and marketing positions for SAS forecasting software. Prior to this, he spent 19 years in forecasting, supply chain, and consulting positions in the food, consumer electronics, and apparel industries. In 2017 Mike received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Institute of Business Forecasting. He is the author of “The Business Forecasting Deal” (2010), principal editor of “Business Forecasting: Practical Problems and Solutions” (2015) and “Business Forecasting: The Emerging Role of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning” (2021), and editor of “Forecasting with SAS®: Special Collection” (2020). Mike holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Michigan State University and master’s degrees in Philosophy and Mathematical Sciences from Johns Hopkins University.
Stephan Kolassa, Deputy Editor
Stephan Kolassa, Data Science Expert at SAP AG, Switzerland. He is responsible for the statistical and time series analysis aspects in developing software for automatic and robust causal forecasting of daily SKU/store level data in the retail sector. He is also involved in research for downstream forecast-based processes, such as price optimization, assortment planning, and replenishment. In his spare time, he does inferential statistics in biological and clinical psychology. In 2023 Stephan was named a Fellow of the IIF.
Jeff Baker, Associate Editor
Jeff Baker has over 25 years of experience in demand management, S&OP, and advanced planning and scheduling. In 2018, he earned a Master of Engineering in Supply Chain Management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Jeff is the recipient of Supply & Demand Chain Executive’s 2019 Pros to Know award, and the Institute of Business Forecasting and Planning’s 2019 Excellence in Business Forecasting award. He is an advocate for advancing the supply chain management field and does so through training, speaking, and volunteering at events worldwide.
Fotios Petropoulos, Associate Editor
Fotios Petropoulos is an associate professor at the School of Management, University of Bath. Previously he served as an assistant professor at the Cardiff Business School of Cardiff University, senior research associate at the Lancaster University Centre for Forecasting (2012-2014) and research associate and unit coordinator of the Forecasting & Strategy Unit of National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) from 2003 to 2012. His research program has addressed behavioral aspects of forecasting and forecast process improvement in business and supply chain. He has provided knowledge transfer and consultancy in retail, supply chain, spare parts, utilities, and software development. Fotios is also an associate editor of International Journal of Forecasting. Lastly, he is a co-founder of the Forecasting Society, which promotes and disseminates judgmental forecasting research and its applications.
Evangelos Spliliotis, Associate Editor
Evangelos Spiliotis is a Research Fellow at the Forecasting & Strategy Unit, National Technical University of Athens. He is
the co-organizer of the M4, M5, and M6 forecasting competitions and an associate editor of the International Journal of Forecasting.
Aris Syntetos, Associate Editor
Aris Syntetos is a professor of Operational Research and Operations Management at Cardiff University and Supply-Chain Forecasting editor for Foresight. He also serves on the Executive Committee of the International Society for Inventories Research (ISIR) and on the board of directors of the International Institute of Forecasters (IIF). Aris has advised many businesses on supply chain forecasting and inventory management.
Column Editors
Simon Clarke, Opinion-Editorial
Simon Clarke has been an active member of the Foresight family since the publication began in 2005. Then Group Director of Forecasting at Coca-Cola, Simon led a team of several dozen forecasting professionals, creating the highly collaborative forecasting process described in his first (of many) Foresight articles Transformation Lessons from Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc.: Managing the Introduction of a Structured Forecast Process (Issue 4, June 2006). Simon has been a long-standing member of the Foresight Advisory Board, presented talks at ISF2012 in Boston and 2015 in Riverside, and has penned a dozen columns, commentaries, and book reviews for this journal. He currently serves as a Principal at Argon & Co (formerly Crimson and Co), whose services guide business operations, development, and transformations. His three-part blog for Argon briefly highlights the purpose, context, and objectives of the forecasting function.
Shari De Baets, Judgmental Forecasting
Shari De Baets has a PhD in applied economics from Ghent University and is an assistant professor at the Open University of the Netherlands and visiting professor at the KULeuven, Belgium. She is an engaged researcher and teacher in the cross-disciplinary field of behavioral science and automation in society, the workplace, and business (operations management and project management), with a strong interest in judgmental forecasting and the human perception of algorithms in work life.
Elaine Deschamps, Government & Public Policy
Elaine Deschamps is Executive Director of the Washington State Caseload Forecast Council, an independent state agency responsible for producing entitlement forecasts that provide the foundation for 80 percent of the Washington State budget. These forecasts include health care, public education, the criminal justice system, human services, and public assistance programs. Elaine has spent 25 years in public service, previously as Senior Fiscal Analyst for the Washington State Senate Ways and Means Committee, in charge of the low-income health care and public health budgets. She received double majors in political science and economics from the University of Puget Sound, and her MA and PhD in political science from Indiana University. Elaine has published articles in the International Journal of Forecasting and Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting. Her interests involve organizational dynamics of forecasting, health care and budget forecasting, judgmental adjustments, and collaborative forecasting. She has served on the Editorial Board of Foresight and has consulted in both the public and private sector, in arenas ranging from low-income health care to supply chain forecasting.
Anne-Flore Elard, Machine Learning & AI
Anne-Flore Elard is a practitioner in Data Science and Advanced Analytics with an MBA from MIT Sloan. Her thesis focused on collective intelligence frameworks, after which she developed applications leveraging text similarity measurement and created AI service offerings for multiple companies. Since 2018, she has deepened her expertise in forecasting by utilizing Machine Learning techniques and is currently building an advanced analytics practice and service offering for Kinaxis.
Tao Hong, Energy & Environment
Tao Hong is Associate Professor of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he directs the Big Data Energy Analytics Laboratory (BigDEAL). He is the Founding Chair of IEEE Working Group on Energy Forecasting, General Chair of the Global Energy Forecasting Competition. He is an Editor of IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid and Associate Editor of the International Journal of Forecasting. Since 2008, he has been providing training and consulting services to hundreds of organizations in the energy industry.
Malvina Marchese, Financial Forecasting
Malvina Marchese is an associate professor in finance and the Academic Program Director of Finance Degrees at Bayes (formerly Cass) Business School. She is also an invited associate professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, a financial forecasting consultant for Maersk Brokers Advisory and CBRE Investment Management, and was previously head of Risk Management at Shell Oil. Malvina holds a PhD in econometrics from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research focuses on high-dimensional models for volatility and correlations forecasting with applications to commodities, and on fractional integration in volatility modeling.
Christian Schäfer, Life Sciences
Christian Schäfer is Professor of Quantitative Management at DHBW Mannheim, and in February 2025 will assume the role of Professor of Management in Life Sciences at the University of Applied Sciences Mainz, Germany. Christian has eight years of experience in diverse roles within an international biopharmaceutical company. His research focuses on uncertainty quantification, modeling patient drug-switching behaviors, and strategic forecasting in the BioPharma sector. Since 2015, he has served as the scientific lead for the Certificate in Strategic Forecasting Practice in Life Sciences, a collaborative program between the IIF and academia, aimed at equipping biopharmaceutical professionals with advanced forecasting skills.
Ira Sohn, Long-Range Forecasting
Ira Sohn has been a professor of economics and finance at Montclair State University in New Jersey since 1984. Before that, he worked closely with Nobel Laureate Wassily Leontief on long-term global projections of energy, metals, and agricultural commodities. Over the last decade, in addition to serving as editor of Long-Range Forecasting for Foresight, he assessed these forecasts — made 30 years ago — in light of the economic, financial, technological, and demographic changes witnessed in the global economy.
Simon Spavound, Book Reviews
Simon Spavound is an Assistant Clinical Professor in Decision Sciences at Drexel University. He was previously Head of Data Science for the US region at Peak, a UK-founded AI company. Simon has worked on a wide variety of AI/Machine Learning projects across three continents. Many of these projects involved forecasting, and he brings this experience into his teaching and consulting projects. His particular interest is in ensuring companies realize value from their ML projects and what makes a forecast useful within an organization.
