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Entrepreneurship and research go hand in hand

With a background rooted in urban planning and sustainability from the Royal Institute of Technology and a specialization in management from Karolinska Institute, Ph.D student Saman Amir’s work at SSE revolves around sustainability with focus on the circular economy. She is passionate about sustainability both from the environmental and socio-economic justice standpoint and is now investigating the circular supply chains from a sustainability, business strategy and operations perspective.

"My ambition and journey to do a PhD at SSE is a telling tale of my interest in building a bridge between technology and business. Exploiting the principles of circular economy such as eliminate (waste and pollution), circulate (resources at highest value) and regenerate (the nature), my research aims to contribute to developing industrial systems that are inherently circular (closed-loop by design)", says Saman.

In her research, Saman is using the "systems thinking" lens for implementation of the circular economy principles in businesses. In her view the systems thinking allows her to understand and analyze the interdependencies inherent to a circular business including value proposition models, products and circular supply chains.  

"My current focus is on strategic and operational aspects of circular businesses such as conceptualizing circular supply chains and developing analysis methodology using modeling and simulations. This approach will enable businesses in better decision-making to improve, particularly, the value recovery and reuse strategies in their transformation towards circularity", Saman explains.

Entrepreneur and researcher

In 2014, Saman began her entrepreneurial journey when she co-founded CirBES AB, a company which specializes in the implementation of circular strategies. The company’s ambition is to help businesses in dealing with the complexities of circular economy driven strategies and their implementation.

"Our company works with state-of-the-art methodologies and tools for the circular economy. We offer awareness and knowledge-building workshops on circular economy with experiential hands-on tools such as our circular economy board game developed by CirBES team. Additionally, we also work with decision support tools which can provide both quick checks as well as in-depth assessments for circularity", says Saman.

CSR