Wil van der Aalst

Profile

Professor Wil van der Aalst is one of the founders and a world-leading authority in the field of Process Mining, and is widely recognized as the “Father of Process Mining.” He has long been a leading figure in the development and application of data-driven methods for analyzing, discovering, and optimizing real-world business processes, with a profound influence on the international academic community. He is also the most prolific researcher areas such as Business Process Management and Petri nets. According to Research.com, Professor van der Aalst was ranked 9th globally among computer scientists in 2025. Since 2018, Professor van der Aalst has served as a Chair Professor at RWTH Aachen University in Germany and as the Founding Director of the RWTH Center for Artificial Intelligence. He is also the chief scientist at Celonis, the leading global process intelligence company. Previously, he was a Distinguished University Professor at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) in the Netherlands, a title held by only five professors university-wide.

Major Honors and Titles

1. In 2018, he received Germany's highest-level academic award: the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship.
2. In 2022, he was elected a member of acatech, the German National Academy of Science and Engineering.
3. In 2021, he was elected an IEEE Fellow.
4. In 2020, he was elected an ACM Fellow.
5. In 2020, he was elected an IFIP Fellow.
6. In 2014, he was elected a member of KNAW, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
7. In 2011, he was elected a member of Academia Europaea.

Research Direction

• Process Mining
• Artificial Intelligence
• Process Intelligence
• Data Science