Marcella De Martino is a senior researcher at the Institute for Research on Innovation and Services for Development of the National Research Council of Italy. She holds a PhD in applied economics from the Department of Transport and Regional Economics of the University of Antwerp. She focusses on socio-economic research — qualitative and quantitative analysis — more particularly in the Mediterranean Basin. She has been active, among other fields, in port competitiveness and sustainable development strategies; supply chain management and port governance; multimodal transport chains and interoperability in the Maghreb and in Western European countries; innovation in small and medium enterprises of the agri-food supply chains. Last year, she won the General Manager Fernand Suykens Prize for Port Studies awarded by our Academy.