Wil van der Aalst


Willibrordus Martinus Pancratius van der Aalst is a Dutch computer scientist and full professor at RWTH Aachen University, leading the Process and Data Science group. His research and teaching interests include information systems, workflow management, Petri nets, process mining, specification languages, and simulation. He is also known for his work on workflow patterns.

Biography

Born in Eersel, Netherlands, van der Aalst received an MSc in computing science in 1988 at the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, and a PhD in mathematics in 1992 with the thesis "Timed colored Petri nets and their application to logistics" under supervision of Jaap Wessels and Kees van Hee.
In 1992 he started working at the Eindhoven University of Technology as an assistant professor for the department of Mathematics and Computing Science, where he headed the Specification and Modeling of Information systems research group. 2000 to 2003 he became a part-time full professor at the Computing Science department. And from 2000 to 2006 he was head of the Information Systems department at the Technology Management department of TU/e. Since 2006 he is full professor at the Department of Mathematics & Computer Science of the Eindhoven University of Technology. He also has a part-time appointment in the BPM group of Queensland University of Technology.
He has been a visiting professor on at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the University of Georgia, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, the University of Colorado, Queensland University of Technology, Aarhus University, and Fondazione Bruno Kessler.
He is associate editor for several journals, including "IEEE Transactions on Services Computing", "IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics", "International Journal of Business Process Integration and Management", "International Journal on Enterprise Modelling and Information Systems Architectures", "Computers in Industry", and "Transactions on Petri Nets and Other Models of Concurrency".
He is series editor of "Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing" by Springer, member of the editorial board of "Distributed and Parallel Databases" and "Business and Information Systems Engineering", and member of several steering committees, including "International Conference Series on Business Process Management", "International Conference Series on Application and Theory of Petri nets" and "International Workshop Series on Web Services and Formal Methods". He is also a member of the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities and the Academy of Europe. Van der Aalst was elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2014.

Work

Van der Aalst's research interest is in the fields of information systems, business process management, simulation, Petri nets, process models, workflow management systems, verification techniques, process mining, enterprise resource planning systems, computer supported cooperative work, web services, business process redesign, resource allocation and interorganizational business processes.
He is a strong supporter of open-source software. He initiated and led the development of:
He also initiated the workflow patterns initiative. This work influenced industry standards such as the Business Process Execution Language, the Business Process Modeling Notation, etc. Van der Aalst's ideas have also influenced various widely used commercial software tools such as Flower, Protos, Futura Reflect, Staffware, WebSphere, and ARIS.
Other scientific contributions of Van der Aalst are in the fields of Business Process Discovery, event-driven process chains, the Workflow Management Coalition and XPDL.
Van der Aalst is an ISI Highly Cited researcher. According to Google Scholar he is the eight highest ranked computer scientist in the world and 1st among computer scientists not in the US. See .

Publications

Van der Aalst has published in total more than 400 books, journal papers, book chapters, conference papers, and reports on these topics. Books, a selection:
Articles, a selection: