Prof. Manoj Kumar Tiwari (FNAE, FASc, FNASc, and FIISE) has been the Founding Director of IIM Mumbai since August 2023, and he also served as Director of the National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE) in Mumbai from 2019 to 2023. He was a Professor with a Higher Academic Grade (HAG) in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He is actively involved in research relevant to the application of optimization, modeling, decision support systems, and data mining in logistics, supply chain management, and manufacturing research domains. He is an associate or senior editor of several renowned journals, including IJPR, POMS, JIM, IEEE-SMCA, INS, and CAIE. Prof Tiwari has led numerous projects and consultancy assignments with prominent industry and government organizations in India, including the Indian Air Force, Procter and Gamble, TATA Hitachi, and ports located in eastern India. In addition, he engaged in collaborative research with partners from Loughborough University (UK), the Institute for Manufacturing (IfM) at the University of Cambridge (UK), the Warwick Manufacturing Group (UK), Durham University (UK), and the University of Connecticut (USA). Prof. Tiwari is the author of over 370 articles in leading international journals, with an H-index of 90. He is a fellow of The National Academy of Sciences India (NASI), Indian Academy of Sciences (FASc), and Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE), USA, and also recognised with David F. Baker Distinguished Research Award (IISE, USA).