Group leader prof.dr.ir. W.M.P. van der Aalst
Wil van der Aalst is a full professor of the section Information Systems at TU/e having a position in both the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science and the Department of Technology Management. Currently he is also an adjunct professor at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) working within the BPM group there.
His research interests include workflow management, process mining, Petri nets, business process management, process modeling, and process analysis.
Wil van der Aalst has published more than 115 journal papers, 15 books (as author or editor), and over 230 refereed conference/workshop publications, and 40 book chapters. Many of his papers are highly cited, making him the Dutch computer scientist with the highest h-index (65). He has been a co-chair of many conferences and he serves on the editorial board of several journals.
The research
The Architecture of Information Systems (AIS) research group investigates methods, techniques and tools for the design and analysis of process-aware information systems, i.e., systems that support business processes (workflows) in organizations. We are not only interested in these information systems and their architecture, but also try to model and analyze the business processes and organizations they support.
The research concentrates on formalisms for modeling and methods to discover and analyze models. On the one hand formal methods are being used, e.g., the group has a long tradition in Petri-net modeling and analysis. On the other hand, we are interested in modeling languages widely used in industry (EPCs, UML, BPMN, BPEL, etc.). In contrast to many other research groups we do not accept a model as an objective starting point, i.e., we also try to discover process models through process mining and check the conformance of models based on reality.
The AIS group tries to make research results accessible by providing (open-source) software. Notable examples are ProM (process mining and process analysis) and YAWL (workflow management). These implementation efforts illustrate that the problems of tomorrow’s practice are the driving force behind the development of new theory, methods, and tools by AIS.
The group offers master thesis projects on a variety of topics in this area. Examples topics are:
- Modeling of (process-aware) information systems
- development, prototyping and evaluation of (process-aware) information systems
- Process mining
- Model transformation
- Verification of models
- Simulation of models
Master's projects
Many master projects are linked to some external organization. Examples are IBM, Pallas Athena, SAP, ING, Deloitte, AMC Hospital, Justice Department, ASML, Philips Medical Systems, Océ, etc.
See the website for more information on the group and its projects.
