Supply chain researcher has citizenship fast-tracked

OTTAWA – The federal government fast-tracked the Canadian citizenship process for a University of Manitoba professor, citing an “urgent need” to facilitate his planned research on COVID-19.

Adolf Ng, whose focus is on supply chain logistics, became a Canadian citizen in an extraordinary online ceremony last Wednesday.

Ng had been scheduled to write the citizenship test in March, when his appointment was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

But he was among dozens of academics who’d been awarded federal funds for research into the effects of COVID-19, and he wanted to travel to China as part of his work.

So he wrote the government asking if they could speed up the process and they responded by scheduling a ceremony held over video conferencing.

Ng says that receiving his citizenship in such a unique way brings with it a heightened sense of obligation to contribute to the country.

He is Professor of Transportation and Supply Chain Management at the Asper School of Business of the University of Manitoba. He earned his DPhil from the University of Oxford (St. Antony’s College), and worked as a faculty member at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (China) and Erasmus University Rotterdam (Netherlands).

His specialty is research and teaching of port management, transportation geography, climate change adaptation planning, transportation infrastructure planning and management, institutional and organizational change, global supply chains, and maritime education. With more than $11 million in competitive research grants, his scholarly outputs include four books, more than 60 papers in leading journals, and other forms of publication.

A recent study identified him as one of the world’s Top-5 scholars in maritime research in terms of contributions and impacts.