John Bell is the head of Haslam’s Department of Supply Chain Management & John H. “Red” Dove Professor of Supply Chain Management, R. Stanley Bowden II Faculty Research Fellow. Before joining UT’s faculty in 2010, Bell was a career maintenance and logistics officer in the United States Air Force.

His teaching and research interests are in logistics and supply chain management, vehicle routing, facility location selection, hazardous material transportation and supply chain strategy and risk. His publications have appeared in various top-tier journals and he is a frequent presenter at meetings of national and international professional societies, including the DSI, POMS and INFORMS.

Bell has won several awards for his management, teaching and research efforts during his academic and military careers. In 1993, he was the General Leo Marquez Award winner as the outstanding maintenance manager in the United States Air Forces Europe. Later, in 1998, he received the Louis Polk Award from the National Defense Industrial Association for his research on countering parts obsolescence in aircraft manufacturing supply chains. In addition, he was a Distinguished Graduate of the Master of Science Logistics Management program at AFIT. He was selected for the Edwin Aldrin Award as the top leader in his class in 1998.

Following two years of conducting research for the Pentagon, he was competitively selected for a U.S. Air Force scholarship to pursue his doctorate education at Auburn University. Following his graduation from Auburn in 2003, he spent three years on the faculty at AFIT, where he became the division chief for the Logistics Management program and was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel.

Bell has received competitive research grants of more than $100,000 from the United States Air Force to research logistics facility location selection and has held memberships and positions in the following societies: CSCMP, DSI, POMS, INFORMS, AST&L and SOLE.