Prof. Xin Tian received his B.E. in Industrial Engineering (major) and Computer Science and Technology (minor) from Tsinghua University and Ph.D. in Management from Chinese Academy of Sciences and Hong Kong Polytechnic University (joint programme). He is currently the director of the Virtual Business Research Laboratory of the CAS Research Center on Fictitious Economy & Data Science, and the Associate Head of the Department of Digital Economy and Virtual Business at School of Economics and Management, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences.
His research interests include virtual business, retailing, e-commerce, mobile commerce, information systems, supply chain finance, logistics and supply chain management, port shipping, operation management, etc. He has the experiences as a Visiting Professor at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Research Fellow at the Business School of the City University of Hong Kong, and Visiting Scholar at the School of Business Administration at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the Department of Management Science at the City University of Hong Kong, and Business School of Lingnan University in Hong Kong, etc.
Prof. Tian followed and assisted Prof. Siwei Cheng, a famous economist, management scientist, and vice chairman of the 9th and 10th National People's Congress in China, to propose, develop, apply and promote the virtual business theory and create virtual business disciplines, and is responsible for virtual business applications in industries such as retail, e-commerce, logistics and ports. During this period, Prof. Tian served as a senior consultant, senior data analyst, consulting director, COO, vice president of business group or research institutes at a wide variety of leading IT and E-commerce firms, providing one-stop service of informatization and solutions for nearly 100 large and medium-sized well-known retail companies in China which included more than 20 Chinese Top100 chain retailers, in the fields of retail strategy, enterprise management model, store purchase, sales and inventory, virtual and real channels integration, logistics warehousing, procurement and supply chain operations, business intelligence and data decision-making. Tian co-founded a leading retail logistics and supply chain information service provider in China, and the top three vertical industry e-commerce company in China among more than 150 companies, and jointly created the "virtual business" company registration Category. He also jointly founded a Shanghai Enterprise Technology Center (provincial and ministerial level) in the field of retail information/digital intelligence, and jointly established several prefecture-level enterprise R&D centers or enterprise research institutes.
When worked at the frontline of enterprise in 2006-2007, Prof. Tian proposed "fourth party logistics theory" with Chinese characteristics (referring that the business role of logistics will change from a supporter to a leader, loading various new virtual and physical business models) and "virtual retail model" (referring to the efficient logistics network to realize the virtualization of retail enterprise entities and load the integration of virtual and physical channels)，and has innovatively applied them to Chinese industry. Multiple sets of information system platforms co-designed by Prof. Tian have been well-applied in various industries for a long time.
Prof. Tian has engaged in business theory research and field practice in virtual business, retail, e-commerce, mobile commerce, logistics and supply chain management, supply chain finance, port shipping and other fields for nearly 20 years. He has published more than 100 papers in domestic and international top and well-known academic journals such as Management Science, Information Systems Research, Production and Operations Management, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, International Journal of Production Economics, Information Sciences, Journal of Management World, System Engineering-Theory& Practice, and Chinese Journal of Management Science. Prof. Tian has published four academic monographs in Science Press and jointly proposed supply chain engineering theory; provided four enterprise management cases in the China Management Case Sharing Center and won the 13th "National Hundred Excellent Management Cases" Award; published several policy reports in "Economic Daily", "Guangming Daily", "Jiefang Daily" and other Chinese mainstream media, which were adopted by the State Council, published as an internal reference, or approved by the state leaders. Plenty of Tian’s master students were admitted as doctoral students by well-known universities with full scholarship.
Prof. Tian has presided over a number of projects funded by government and entrusted by enterprises, including the National Natural Science Foundation of China Youth Science Fund, general projects, sub-projects of key projects, general projects of the Beijing Natural Science Foundation of China, Shanghai Industry-University-Research Cooperation Program Projects, and Shandong major special projects for independent innovation and achievement transformation and others. Prof. Tian has received 7 provincial and ministerial-level scientific and technological progress awards and 2 prefecture-level scientific and technological progress awards, including Shanghai Science and Technology Progress Award, China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing Science and Technology Progress Award, and Shanghai Qingpu District Science and Technology Progress Award.
