Driving Vision into Reality: Meet the HOLOGISTICS Advisory Board 

Every day, millions of tons of goods move across Europe’s ports, railways, and roads. However, the current fragmentation leads to unnecessary waste, high emissions, and inefficiencies. HOLOGISTICS is addressing this challenge directly by combining physical innovation, digital twins, and Artificial Intelligence to optimize transport flows and accelerate the transition toward zero-emission logistics.

To ensure these visionary technologies translate seamlessly into everyday operations, HOLOGISTICS relies on the strategic guidance of its Advisory Board. Composed of leading minds from academia, artificial intelligence, and maritime operations, the board plays a critical role in reviewing progress, validating stakeholder requirements, and refining project KPIs.

Dr. Hein Chetcuti 

Container Terminal Operations Leader Dr. Chetcuti is a distinguished leader in container terminal operations, specializing in transhipment logistics, digital transformation, and data-driven decision-making in complex port environments. Holding a DBA, his focus centers on aligning operational excellence with human capital and technological innovation. 

His Perspective: “With this project, I aim to bridge operational reality and innovation, ensuring solutions are not only visionary but also implementable within modern container terminals and logistics ecosystems.”

Mitja Jermol 

Deputy Head of the International Research Center on Artificial Intelligence (IRCAI) under the auspices of UNESCO Mitja Jermol holds the UNESCO Chair on Open Technologies for OER and Open Education at the Jožef Stefan Institute. He brings decades of cross-disciplinary expertise in AI research and development, helping HOLOGISTICS leverage data to optimize European freight ecosystems.  

His Perspective: “Watching Hologistics perfectly mirror physical supply chains with digital intelligence is truly inspiring. I am happy to advise a team that brings visionary tech down to earth, creating logistics networks that are smarter, efficient and resilient.” 

 

Prof. Rochdi Merzouki 

Full Professor at Polytech Lille (University of Lille) & Leader of the SOFTE team at CRIStAL lab (CNRS). An expert in autonomous robotic systems and systems-of-systems engineering, Prof. Merzouki coordinates major European initiatives in digital twins and intelligent autonomous transport systems. 

His Perspective: “HOLOGISTICS represents an important step toward realising the vision of the Physical Internet, where logistics systems evolve from isolated infrastructures into interoperable and collaborative systems of systems. Using the combination of AI-driven orchestration, multimodal interoperability, and shared resource management, HOLOGISTICS project will enable adaptive, resilient, and sustainable freight ecosystems. From a systems engineering perspective, HOLOGISTICS will demonstrate how distributed transport assets, digital platforms, and autonomous decision layers will cooperate dynamically to optimise flows, reduce emissions, and improve operational efficiency at the European scale.”

Jaco Voorspuij

Head of Consulting at FixLog Consulting. A recognized expert in logistics and supply chain operations, he specializes in developing and implementing global standards to achieve substantial and scalable improvements. He has a proven track record in leading innovative solutions within EU-funded projects, including the iCargo initiative, which won the European Commission award for best innovation in IT and society.

His Perspective: “Scalable innovation of logistics processes—making them smarter, more efficient, and more sustainable, as envisioned in HOLOGISTICS—requires the intelligent use of global standards and seamless collaboration. To transform freight ecosystems at scale, we must move beyond individual optimizations and adopt a unified framework. From a standardisation and implementation perspective, HOLOGISTICS will demonstrate how common protocols and collaborative networks can bridge the gap between innovation and real-world scalability. If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together and build on common standards.”