Rita Difrancesco is Associate Professor of Operations & Supply Chain at the Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering at Politecnico di Milano (Italy). Previously, Rita has been visiting scholar at Kellogg-Northwestern University (US), visiting professor at MIT (US) and Associate Professor at Eada Business School (Spain). She graduated in Engineering Management at Sapienza – University of Rome (Italy) and has a doctoral degree and post-doc in Supply Chain Management from WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management (Germany). Prior to joining academia, she worked in the fields of project management, IT consultancy and logistics. Her research interests lie in product returns management, online and omni-channel retail, closed-loop supply chains and sustainability. She published and presented her work in journals and international conferences in Europe and in the US. She has teaching experience in the fields of Operations Management, Supply Chain Management and Sustainability.