Martin Schneider studied at the University of Trier (Germany) and Aston University (Britain) and holds a diploma in Economics. In Trier he also received his Ph.D. in 1998 and his habilitation for Business Administration in 2003. From 2004 to 2003, he conducted research at the Institute for Labour Law and Industrial Relation in the EU in Trier. In 2001, he was a visiting scholar to the Law School of the University of California, Berkely. He has held various teaching assignments, for example, at the Bordeaux School of Management and the LMU Munich. Since 2006, he is Professor for Business Administration, in particular Human Resource Management at the University of Paderborn. His main research interests are in cross-country comparative employment relations, the management of intangible assets, and organizational behavior.

Leena Suhl received her PhD in 1988 in Operations Research at Helsinki University of Technology (now Aalto University), and was from 1989 to 1995 Assistant Professor for Business Information Systems in Berlin University of Technology. Since 1995 she has been full Professor for Business Information Systems and head of the Decision Support and Operations Research Lab at University of Paderborn, Germany. She was invited as a visiting scientist to the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Lab in Yorktown Heights, USA, and has visited universities in Finland, USA, Poland, Korea and China as well. Leena Suhl has initiated and coordinated numerous research projects with partners from academia and industry. Furthermore, she has published more than 100 research papers and is associate editor or department editor of four international scientific journals. She has organized and served for many international conferences and is co-founder of two spinoff companies. Her research interests include decision support systems and operations research as well as applications in logistics, traffic, and production systems.

Stefan Jungblut studied economics at the Georg-August University in Göttingen. During his studies he took internship positions at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) and the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DIHK). In 1995 he entered a position as Research Assistant and Junior Lecturer at the University of Paderborn. After his dissertation he spent one year as visiting scholar at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Since October 2011 Stefan Jungblut is Professor for economics at the University of Paderborn. His research interest is in monetary economics, financial markets and the macroeconomy, economic integration, and the international economy. He is academic advisor for incoming exchange students, coordinator for Japan in the Asian Studies in Business and Economics (ASBE) program, and coordinator for the master program in International Economics and Management.

Kostja Siefen studied at the University of Paderborn (Germany) and holds a diploma in Business Computing. He received his PhD from the University of Paderborn in 2012 for his work in the area of mathematical optimization methods for complex infrastructural planning problems. Since 2014 he works as postdoctoral researcher at the chair of Prof. Leena Suhl. His research interests include the application of mathematical optimization and simulation methods to complex decision situations with a focus on Mixed-Integer Optimization and Business Intelligence methods.