Hasselt University
Benoît Depaire
Full Professor of Business Informatics
For twenty years now I've seen the same pattern: business leaders and managers know their business inside out, but keeping up with what IT can do today and promises tomorrow, and translating that into business value, is a discipline of its own. (Those who start from the technology side usually face the reverse challenge.) My research and my work with organisations sit exactly on that bridge: using business data and AI for better decisions, better processes and a sharper view of your customers and your market, reasoning from fundamentals, not from the hype of the day.
What I stand for
Research
Over twenty years of research into how data and AI create value in a business context. I've supervised more than twenty PhD researchers and am co-founder of Event Data & Behavioral Analytics, one of the longest-running workshops at the ICPM process-mining conference.
Practice
With BIARU, the applied research unit I lead, I work directly with organisations on their real problems. We translate those into AI solutions that work in practice and hold up scientifically.
Philosophy
AI is a tool, not a goal. Start from the technology and you spend your time looking for problems to fit it. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I start from the real problem, then ask what technology can genuinely do for it: seeing past the hype to where the value actually is.
Listen
Hoe kan het ijskarretje altijd op het juiste moment voorbij jouw huis komen? (in Dutch)
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Questions about research, a collaboration through the applied research unit, or a talk?