Christian Blanco

Background

Christian Blanco is an assistant professor of operations management at the Fisher College of Business. He joined the Management Sciences department after receiving his PhD from the UCLA Anderson School of Management in 2017. Blanco analyzes data to gain insights that will enable firms to develop sustainable and safe supply chains.

“Many firms are now responding to climate changerelated risks, but the tools how to effectively manage these risks remain limited,” Blanco says. Blanco and colleagues use data collected by CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) to examine the opportunities that firms pursue to reduce their carbon footprint. “Our research shows that an increasing number of US firms are now measuring and reporting their supply chain carbon footprint, but we find that there are still opportunities for firms to improve and capture a larger portion of their global supply chain carbon emissions.”

Blanco describes their work on risk assessment and safety, “Probabilistic Risk Assessment has been used in the nuclear industry for more than 30 years, yet the scientific evidence of its impact on safety is not wellmeasured.” Blanco and colleagues collected operational data from nuclear power plants to test this. “We find that the process of quantifying risks itself can lead to improvements in safety performance. It turns out that the notion ''measurement leads to improvement'' applies to safety.”

Prior to pursuing his PhD at UCLA, Blanco was part of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Lab at UC Berkeley. He collaborated with a team of scientists in developing a model called “SWITCH” that identifies the leastcost combination of energy technologies that will provide lowcarbon electricity in 11 western states.

Awards

National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (20112014) UCLA Anderson Doctoral Fellowship (20122016) UCLA Easton Technology Leadership Program (Summer 2014; 2015) UCLA Anderson Center for Global Management Award (Summer 2014) NETL DoE Research Grant $125,000 (coauthored grant with Jay Apt 20122014) UC LEADS Professional Development Grant (UC Berkeley 20102011)

Areas of Interest

Sustainability issues in operations management Carbon footprinting in supply chains Impact of risk assessments on safety Energy production and technology management

Education

PhD, UCLA Anderson School of Management (2017) AB, Applied Mathematics, UC Berkeley (2011)

AB, Environmental Economics and Policy, UC Berkeley (2011)

Courses

BUSMGT 3230 Introduction to Operations Management: Improving Competitiveness in Organizations

Introduction to operations and supply chain management to improve manufacturing and service organizations; analyzing, controlling and improving resources and processes to increase productivity, generate valueadded output and meet business goals. Prereq: Econ 2001.01 (200), 2002.01 (201); and Stat 1430 (133) or equivalent. Not open to students with credit for 3130 (430) or 630, or to students enrolled in UUSS, UExp or PreBSBAPR.

BUSMGT 7253 Sustainable Operations

Reviews several sustainable operations strategy models and examines different ways of adopting ecoefficiency principles into business operations through waste reduction and design for recovery. Highlights factors that promote these efforts, such as environmental laws and product returns. Prereq: Enrollment in MBA or WPMBA program.