Juliana, who recently completed her PhD in the Department of Management Science, has won the 2013 Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Award in the Operations and Production Management category. The competition was open to students anywhere in the world who had been awarded their doctorate in the three-year period up to October 2013.

Juliana also received a cash prize of €1,500 and the potential publication of a paper based on her research in the International Journal of Operations and Production Management.

Juliana’s thesis was entitled ‘Operations Management Perspectives on Expert Services’.

“My thesis studied Expert Services provided for business markets, like engineering, software development and technical advisory services,” she said.

“It imports the concept of expertise from the psychology field to obtain a refined view on the nature of ‘Expert Services’ and, in this way, it improves our ability to manage them and to improve the processes by which they are delivered.

“This scope wasn’t always so clear and, like any other PhD student, I struggled to find the right path. I was, however, persistent and took advantage of the fruitful research environment at LUMS. I was also lucky to have Professor Martin Spring as my doctoral supervisor. He taught me so much and supported even the craziest ideas.

“I did my best to produce a good-quality thesis and winning the Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Award shows I’ve accomplished that. I hope that operations management researchers and expert service managers find in my thesis ideas to further inform their work.”

Professor Martin Spring said: “Juliana was a very worthy recipient of this award. The work she did has broken new ground in service operations management. 

“Conducting the fieldwork and then writing the thesis was a process of constant discovery and creativity – as well as great fun – which is down to Juliana’s ability to absorb ideas, think imaginatively, write clearly and make very good judgments about what to pursue and what not to. For the same reasons, she can look forward to a very successful academic career.”

After studying for a BA in Business and an MSc in Operations Management, both awarded by EAESP-FGV in Brazil, Juliana joined Lancaster's Management Science Department’s PhD programme in 2009 and was awarded her PhD in 2013.

Her PhD studentship was fully funded by LUMS. Before dedicating herself to academia, Juliana acted as a consultant and as a supply chain management analyst at Unilever Brazil and Itau-Unibanco Bank. She recently secured a position as Assistant Professor in Marketing and Competitiveness at Centro Universitário FEI in Brazil and retains a position as a Visiting Researcher at LUMS.

Her research explores the role of expertise in service operations and the meaning of service interfaces, especially in the context of knowledge-intensive and B2B services. Aspects of her research have already been published in leading journals and she is currently working in collaboration with Martin Spring and with colleagues in Kedge Business School in Marseilles to develop further publications and new projects.