The Metaverse or what is also called web 3.0 will transform the way we interact with each other. By offering virtual worlds, in which individuals can live immersive experiences through avatars, the perception of oneself, one's body and others will be considerably transformed. Brands invest heavily in the Metaverse to communicate their offers to potential consumers. Today social networks and influencers have a very strong impact on the brain of teenagers and young adults. They are used by brands to create norms about what is acceptable and desirable to buy, affecting the wellbeing and mental health of younger people. Our objective is: 1) to better understand how the youngest people project themselves into these virtual worlds through avatars and interact with brands; 2) to better understand how these new forms of interaction with brands impact their brain, and can lead them to modify their choices and their preferences, and 3) to better understand what are the negative effects on their well-being, or even their mental health. For this, we will carry out experimental studies to understand the process of embodiment in an avatar. We will then conduct immersive studies in virtual reality, to understand the interaction of young people with brands and influencers in the Metaverse. We will end with a neuroimaging study to understand the impact of these new forms of interaction with brands on the brain of young people. The Metaverse is still in its infancy, but there is no doubt that it will be among the main forms of socialization for young people in the near future. Thanks to our research, we hope to come up with recommendations on how to frame marketing practices in the Metaverse and avoid potential abuses, as is the case on social networks.

Despite the rapid discovery of various vaccines against COVID-19, the management of the pandemic by national and international public authorities has posed numerous complex social, economic, and logistical challenges. In France, like in many other countries, finding the balance between economic and social stability and combating the spread of the virus proved to be primordial. This stability has been primarily undermined by logistical constraints such as vaccine shortages and insufficient infrastructure, which have impacted the effectiveness of vaccine allocation and distribution strategies. The SOECOVAC project's main intention is to contribute to public health and public confidence in the healthcare system by providing actionable decision-making tools for policymakers and public health authorities to better navigate future pandemics and ensure equitable and affordable access to vaccines. To achieve this, the project is founded on an interdisciplinary methodology structured around key vaccination-related decisions in the uncertain contexts of pre-pandemic and pandemic phases. This methodology combines optimisation methods and epidemiological simulation techniques such as dynamic and robust linear programming and compartmental models to strengthen the following axes and their synergies: socio-economic considerations in pandemic simulation; socio-economic and regional factors in vaccination decisions; vaccination strategy dynamics; and uncertainty management in pandemic simulation and vaccination decisions. Benefiting from existing correlational theories, the SOECOVAC project aims to enhance understanding of how socio-economic factors in turn influence the dynamics of pandemics and vaccine acceptance, thereby improving the effectiveness of vaccination strategies. Following this approach, the main contributions of the SOECOVAC project include: enriching current pandemic simulation models with enhanced socio-economic factors; optimising vaccine allocation models by considering these new factors; a dynamic model for adapting vaccination decisions to the evolving pandemic; and robust management of uncertainties, particularly related to vaccine availability and efficacy, and specific disease characteristics at the emergance of a pandemic. In this interdisciplinary project, communication and engagement with key stakeholders to ensure relevance and applicability of the results are prioritized. Hence, strong efforts for sharing and disseminating results, such as organising roundtable discussions with an external advisory committee composed of experts from the field of public health, will be mobilised throughout the project.

The modern industries face a significant challenge regarding to the new product and resource evolutions and violate market demand. Reconfigurability is key, allowing the production of various product models within a part family. Companies, such as those in the automotive industry, adapt to product family evolutions taking into account future changes in technologies and resources, requiring frequent line reconfigurations. Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems (RMS) offer a solution, enabling cost-effective and efficient evolution with product families. On the other hand, production resources and assets, such as robotic arms and conveyor belts, become prematurely obsolete, contradicting the principles of sustainability and the circular economy (CE). Utilizing second-hand resources for periodic production line changes presents an opportunity to promote circularity and efficiently respond to Industrial and supply chain disruptions while reducing costs and wastes. Moreover, we prioritize a human-centered approach to (up-)skilling assembly line workers to operate efficiently with second-hand resources, recognizing the importance of their roles in industry. Despite potential benefits from such a resource-sharing using CE, several obstacles hinder the adoption of circular practices, e.g., technical solutions for integrating second-hand resources, assessing the remaining lifespan of assets, and decision-making problems without compromising line productivity. Implementing such a CE in new generation of Industry with the uncertainty in demand and product requirements and manufacturing resource evolution is a critical issue for RMSs. Therefore, REALISTIC project aims to address these challenges by developing a tool to facilitate tactical decision-making processes related to resource selection, replacement, and assembly line design and reconfiguration. The primary goal is to provide an integrated tool that utilizes novel scenario-based mathematical programming models and efficient robust optimization techniques to support tactical decisions in future Industry. Predictive analytics techniques will be also developed to handle product evolution uncertainty, while robust optimization guides decision-making, ensuring insensitivity to worst-case scenarios. The main objective of the studied problems is focused on minimizing total costs related to resource selection, use, maintenance, addition, removal, relocation, and recycling for the worst scenario. By doing so, REALISTIC simplifies the design and future reconfigurations by developing optimization-based AI tools, benefiting industries economically and environmentally.

The main objective of this proposal is to provide new mathematical models and optimization approaches for design of spatio-temporal networks in stochastic and dynamic environment . Optimization approaches and mathematical modelling will concern strategic, tactical and operational levels. More specifically, such combinatorial NP-hard problems as Facility Location and Vehicle Routing problems will be considered jointly through optimizing the following decisions: (1) optimum number of facilities, (2) optimal facility location, (3) optimal relocation of facilities according to dynamic evolving parameters, (4) allocation of clusters to each facility, over the time period where the information about spatio-temporal parameters is incomplete or inexact, (5) various formulations of routing problems among the facilities of the network will be considered under different optimality criteria.

The motivation to develop a master program on “Global Supply Chain Management” is primarily driven by (1) the global trends in supply chain management; (2) its unique contribution to food security, maritime industry and humanitarian relief programs in the Middle East; (3) the institutional capacity of the partner universities to implement the proposed program and the European partners’ excellence in the field of supply chain management. With the increased use of digital technologies and the expanding scope of business operations, supply chain management stands at the forefront of the global economy, making national boundaries irrelevant and companies and countries ever closer. Supply chain management is particularly important in the Middle Eastern context as the region is heavily dependent on international trade for imports and exports and cultural issues play a major role in business practices. In such a highly competitive and globalized market environment, companies need well-educated supply chain management professionals who can easily understand cross-cultural issues and make supply chain decisions that have increasingly become less standardized, more complex, highly dynamic, and talent intensive. GLOB-SM will advance CBHE objectives of supporting modernization, accessibility and internationalization of higher education institutions by developing a highly demanded, technology intensive, and need based curriculum that is new for not only Lebanon and Jordan , but also the whole of Middle East and implementing innovative strategies and tools. Being the only program of its kind in the MENA Region, the program will not only contribute to enhancing the local and regional competences on the management of supply chain, but will also enhance the employability of graduates by providing an international standard high quality education in the field.