About
The gap between what technology can do and what organisations get out of it
One question runs through my whole career like a thread: why do organisations get so much less out of their data and technology than they could? For more than twenty years I have been researching that gap — and helping to close it.
Research and role
I am a full professor of Business Informatics at Hasselt University, where I lead the Business Informatics research group and chair the Quantitative Methods unit. My research sits at the intersection of data mining, process mining and AI in a business context: how do you learn from the traces that processes and decisions leave in data, and how do you turn that insight into better organisations?
That work has by now yielded around 3,450 citations. In 2024 I gave the keynote at ICPM — the international conference on process mining — onAlgorithm Engineering for Process Mining. Just as important: over the years I have supervised nineteen doctoral students through to their PhD. Research is teamwork, and shaping the next generation of researchers is an essential part of the job.
From research to practice
Alongside the fundamental research, I lead our group's applied research unit. There we translate concrete business problems into AI solution designs: no glossy vision exercises, but analyses that start from the actual problem and end with a design that holds up scientifically. Often the most valuable step is precisely sharpening the question — many AI problems turn out, on closer inspection, not to be AI problems at all.
Independence
On independence. I sell no software, have no commercial interest in any vendor, and am not paid to promote any technology. When I advise an organisation, my only interest is that the analysis is correct. Sometimes that means: this is not an AI problem, and that is exactly what I say.
In numbers
- More than twenty years of research in data mining, process mining and AI in a business context
- Around 3,450 citations
- Nineteen doctoral students supervised
- Keynote ICPM 2024 — “Algorithm Engineering for Process Mining”
A more personal closing note goes here: how research, teaching and family life relate to one another, what teaching means to me, and why this site exists. Benoît writes that text himself — a biography in thin, verified facts is no biography.