PhD Studentship: Adopting Agentic Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Building Supply Chain Resilience

Cranfield University - Cranfield School of Management

Duration:  3 years

1st Supervisor: Dr Abhijeet Ghadge

2nd Supervisor: Dr Nicky Yates

This fully funded PhD studentship sponsored by Cranfield School of Management, offers a tax‑free bursary of up to £20,780 plus fees for three years. The project brings together expertise in artificial intelligence and logistics and supply chain management, investigating the potential of adapting agentic AI to enhance supply chain resilience. Following a PhD‑by‑papers route, the research aims to deliver three high‑quality scholarly outputs and develop insights to enhance supply chain management practise.

This project sits at the intersection of supply chain management, artificial intelligence, digital transformation, and resilience research. Global supply chains remain under huge pressure from multiple disruptions. Thus, organisations need intelligent systems that can help them anticipate disruption, coordinate responses, and recover faster, while balancing cost, service, and sustainability goals. The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to address such challenges offers an opportunity.

This PhD will investigate how adopting agentic AI can improve supply chain resilience. The project aims to develop and empirically validate a theory-driven framework showing how agentic AI capabilities, such as sensing, planning, negotiation, and coordinated action, can strengthen resilience across supply chain disruption phases.

This PhD project benefits from a specialist postgraduate environment with strong links to business, industry, and policy. Cranfield School of Management’s Centre for Logistics, Procurement and Supply Chain Management has a well-established international reputation in advanced teaching and research across digital supply chains, decision support systems, sustainability and resilience. This three-year  project is funded by Cranfield School of Management.

The research is expected to generate both theoretical and practical impact. Academically, it will produce a novel framework explaining how agentic AI capabilities can be adopted to build supply chain resilience and under what trade-offs or boundary conditions they work best. In practice, it will provide an implementation roadmap for organisations seeking to deploy agentic AI in supply chains, helping decision-makers strengthen resilience, while also supporting sustainability.

The researcher will benefit from Cranfield’s doctoral training, masterclasses, seminars, publishing support, and conference participation, as well as opportunities to engage with practitioners through thought-leadership activity, developing a powerful mix of research, analytical, and professional skills.

The project offers exposure to contemporary issues in AI adoption, resilience and governance, creating strong employability pathways into academia, consulting, leadership, and policy-oriented roles in the broad domain of supply chain management.

Entry requirements

Applicants should have a first- or second-class UK degree or equivalent in a related discipline. A background in supply chain, logistics and operations management, business analytics, Artificial Intelligence, computer science, or a related field would be particularly suitable. We would especially welcome candidates with an interest in AI, digital innovation and resilience together with strong analytical, communication, and independent research skills.

Funding

Sponsored by Cranfield School of Management, this studentship will provide a bursary of £20,780 (tax free) plus fees* for three years.

This opportunity is open to Home and Overseas fee status students.

For further information:

Name: Dr Abhijeet Ghadge
Email: Abhijeet.Ghadge@Cranfield.ac.uk

If you are eligible to apply, you will need to complete the online application form and submit a research proposal.