Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

KU Leuven is an autonomous university boasting a rich tradition of education and research that dates back six centuries. The university remains vigilantly open to contemporary cultural, economic and industrial realities, as well as to the community’s needs and expectations. KU Leuven is a research-intensive, internationally-oriented university that carries out both fundamental and applied research. It is strongly inter- and multidisciplinary in focus and strives for international excellence. To this end, KU Leuven works together actively with its research partners at home and abroad. KU Leuven is currently by far the largest university in Belgium in terms of research funding and expenditure (EUR 365 million in 2012), and is a charter member of LERU. KU Leuven conducts fundamental and applied research in all academic disciplines with a clear international orientation. KU Leuven participates in over 540 highly competitive European research projects (FP7, 2007-2013), ranking sixth in the league of HES institutions participating in FP7. The KU Leuven has 15 faculties grouped into 3 groups: Biomedical Sciences, Science and Technology and Humanities.

The partners in the project is the LIRIS research group from the Faculty of Economic and Business Economics (part of the Humanities group), an EQUIS-accredited institution with approximately 9,000 students. The Leuven Institute for Research on Information Systems (LIRIS), founded in 1987, coordinates research in the area of information technology and management in organizations. This research embodies: fundamental issues of information systems in organizations (dealing with concepts, models, generic methods, tools and techniques), applied research (relating general research results to specific problems and application areas), and research on the use and implications of information systems throughout society. The research group has acquired a solid, world-wide recognized reputation in the field of management informatics, as illustrated by the various top publications in high-quality journals, research projects, presentations at well-respected conferences, the frequent organisation of scientific events, and the regular editorial activities undertaken. In the area of business informatics, the group has always been a leading research team in Flanders and Belgium. The LIRIS research group has been involved in many fundamental research projects (funded through FWO and university funding) and has a long list of research chairs in collaboration with the industry (see http://feb.kuleuven.be/research/leuven/LIRIS/@AllRPG and http://feb.kuleuven.be/research/leuven/LIRIS/@AllChairs). This cross-fertilization between fundamental research and industry practice allows to conduct research according to the domain’s motto: rigor and relevance. Important research topics are: requirements engineering, enterprise modelling, business process management, model-driven engineering, e-Learning, knowledge discovery, data and process mining; architecture and infrastructure; business data, process, service, rules and decision management.

(Submitted and approved by Monique Snoek on 2015-05-28)