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.
Recent essays
The first essays are in preparation.
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?