David Ernesto Salinas-Navarro, Universidad Panamericana
David Ernesto Salinas-Navarro
Research Professor in Operations Strategy
Universidad Panamericana

My professional interest lies in improving systems, processes, and operations in organisations to impact the sustainability of cities and their communities positively. I'm currently a Senior Lecturer in Operations Management at Universidad Panamericana in Mexico City where I lead the Action Lab, a research initiative on community engagement.

My teaching and research work covers Business Operations Excellence, Lean Systems, Operations Management, and Management Systems. I also focus on educational innovation in higher education, specifically Experiential Learning, Challenge-based Learning, and Authentic Assessment.

I'm a Senior Teaching Fellow (SFHEA), CMBE, a member of the Operational Research Society UK, IEEE, and a fellow of the MIT SCALE Network Latin America, coordinating the Education Innovation initiative. Additionally, I have led education leadership initiatives such as the Healthcare Engineering Management Lab, the Lean Thinking Learning Space (LTLS), and the Social Lab for Sustainable Logistics (SLSL) to enrich Industrial Engineering and Operations Management education. I received the Silver Award for Presence Teaching and Learning at the 2018 QS Reimagine Education competition.

David Ernesto Salinas Navarro holds a PhD in Business/Management Systems from the University of Lincoln in the United Kingdom. He also has a Master's degree in Business Administration from Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico and a PGCert with Distinction in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education from Aston University in the United Kingdom.

He is currently a research professor at the Faculty of Engineering of the Universidad Panamericana in Mexico City, where he directs the Action Lab research initiative for the sustainability and resilience of communities.

Dr. Salinas Navarro's professional and research interest focuses on improving systems, processes and structures in organisations to impact the sustainability of cities and their communities positively. This mainly includes quality education, circular economy, and food security. In this sense, he is the author of a book on performance management in organisations and more than thirty research articles in journals and conferences indexed in engineering education and disciplinary on operations management.

Regarding his professional career, he has served as a senior teaching fellow (August 2021 to August 2024) in operations management at Aston Business School, Aston University, United Kingdom, where he was director of the BSc Business and Management program and co-directed the Community Resilience and Sustainability Education Lab (CoRSEL). He simultaneously served as an external evaluator (2022 to 2025) of the MSc in Supply Chain Management program at the University of Lincoln, for the Royal Airforce in the United Kingdom. Previously, he was an associate professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico City (February 1997 to July 2021), holding different positions such as regional department director, director of master's programs in administration and quality and productivity, and director of the industrial engineering career. He is currently a member of the advisory board of the Department of Industrial Engineering at the Universidad de los Andes in Colombia. Additionally, he has been a guest professor and lecturer at different universities and research entities in Latin America such as EAFIT, Logyca Investigación and Universidad Antonio Nariño in Colombia, Universidad Privada Boliviana in Bolivia, and UTEC in Peru.

Dr. Salinas-Navarro is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA), a Certified Management Business Educator (CMBE) and a member of the Operational Research Society in the United Kingdom. He is a member of MIT's SCALE Network for Latin America, where he leads initiatives in educational innovation. He has also directed different technology transfer projects in Mexico and the United Kingdom in various productive sectors for the development of strategic and operational capacities. For his innovative work in education, he received the Silver Award in Presence Teaching and Learning at the QS Reimagine Education 2018 event in San Francisco, California.