The chair is financed by the American company Perceptive Software and will be held by prof. dr. ir. Hajo Reijers of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. Together with his colleague, prof. dr. ir. Wil van der Aalst, he will supervise two PhD candidates starting in 2103. The young scientists will perform four years of research into "multi-dimensional process mining", that is, searching data sources with advanced methods. 

"Social BPM" (Business Process Management) has been selected as a second area of focus. The ways in which social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, can help improve the collaboration within a company will be studied, as well as how social media can be used to create lucrative links among companies, organizations and independent entrepreneurs.

According to Reijers, TU/e is a world leader in the area of research concerning Business Process Management (BPM). Nonetheless, most of the software comes from the US. "The problem in Europe is that too little top research is converted into economic activity.  Since the Netherlands has the ambition to be among the top players in the knowledge economy, its business community must cooperate more closely with education institutions. That is why we are so pleased with the collaboration with Perceptive Software.”

Oddly enough, this financier is from the US. Does this not undermine their own position? Reijers believes it doesn't. “TU/e has had a very fruitful collaboration with the Dutch company Pallas Athena for fifteen years. They incorporated the process mining technique that we developed in Eindhoven in their software. That company, based in Apeldoorn, was acquired last year by Perceptive Software. The Americans see significant opportunities in TU/e's research and definitely wish to continue with us.

Thanks to the investment, young talent can be developed further and retained for the Netherlands, Reijers claims. Furthermore, additional finding will be pursued for research into BPM so that the university can develop new methods using innovative tools and technology.

As far as the professor is concerned, the specially endowed chair will continue beyond the four years. "We now have a fantastic duo. With the assistance of European funding, we hope to expand our team in the near future with a number of post-docs. They could work at the cutting edge of social BPM and multi-dimensional process mining.”