Professor Francisco Gaudencio M. Freires was born in Fortaleza (state of Ceará, Brazil) in 1974. He holds a degree in Civil Engineering from the Federal University of Ceará (1996), a master’s degree in Production Engineering from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (2000), and a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Management from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (2007). He has experience in production engineering with an emphasis on business logistics and operations management, working mainly on the following topics: supply chain management, reverse logistics, sustainable SCM, and cost management. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA) Polytechnic School. He also works in the Industrial Engineering (PEI) graduate program at UFBA, where he is currently researching renewable energy alternatives from the perspective of supply chain management. He speaks fluent English, upper-intermediate German, advanced Spanish, and upper-intermediate French.