After my PhD graduation in 1999 at KULeuven (Belgium) and a short stint as IT manager and lecturer at the former Vlekho business school in Brussels (2000 – 2002), I was given the Management Information professorship of the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration of Ghent University (Belgium) in October 2002.
Becoming first tenured as an assistant professor and next rising through the ranks as associate professor (2010), full professor (2012) and senior full professor (2020), I founded and grew a Business Informatics research group at UGent which counted back in 2002, apart from myself, just two junior assistants.
Twenty years later, in 2022, and thanks to research funds acquisition but also helped by the expansion of the Faculty, the group includes five academic staff, three post-doctoral researchers, and fifteen doctoral researchers.
Our early studies into accounting information systems, conceptual models, and business ontology have meantime been developed into multiple interconnected research lines amongst three main clusters: business process management; enterprise modelling, engineering, and architecture; and data science applications for business.
Recently, the team made progress in other areas such as digital twins, cybersecurity, digital transformation, and privacy and data protection.
As the head of the UGent Business Informatics research group, I see my role as that of a facilitator, coaching my junior colleagues and guiding PhD students.