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One of three conferences taking place in Aachen in June 2019

The first IEEE International Conference on Process Mining (ICPM) will take place in Aachen (Germany), 24-28 June 2019. ICPM will be co-located with the 40th International Conference on Application and Theory of Petri Nets and Concurrency (Petri Nets 2019), and the 19th IEEE International Conference on Application of Concurrency to System Design (ACSD 2019). The three events will take place in the conference area of the Tivoli football stadium and are organized by the Process and Data Science (PADS) group led by Wil van der Aalst at RWTH Aachen University. Interestingly, the first BPM conference was also co-located with the Petri Nets conference in 2003. Hence, this could be the start of a very successful conference series.

The objective of ICPM 2019  is to explore and exchange knowledge in this field through scientific talks, industry discussions, contests, technical tutorials and panels. The conference covers all aspects of process mining research and practice, including theory, algorithmic challenges, applications and the connection with other fields. The event unifies activities done within the context of the IEEE Task Force on Process Mining. The task force was established in 2009 to promote process mining activities and to create awareness. Over 70 organizations are supporting the IEEE Task Force on Process Mining. Wil van der Aalst is general chair, and Josep Carmona, Mieke Jans, and Marcello La Rosa lead an international program committee composed of 45 process mining experts. See http://icpmconference.org/ for more information about ICPM 2019.

The developments in research and teaching (see the success of the process mining MOOC) have been mirrored by a strong industry uptake, mainly in Europe but now also spreading to other continents like to US and Asia. For example, Gartner released a market guide on process mining in April this year, describing the various categories of process mining techniques and how these are supported by various software vendors, while MarketsAndMarkets has predicted that the process analytics market will be worth USD 1,422 million by 2023, with conformance checking (a category of process mining techniques) expected to be the fastest-growing segment of process analytics market during the forecast period. This further supports the need for a dedicated conference and meeting place.

Another special feature of the event is the celebration of 40 years of Petri net conferences with special guest speakers reflecting on the historical role of Petri’s work.

Our research group aims to progress the state-of-the-art in Process and Data Science, this with a particular focus on process mining. Therefore, we seek innovative ways of information sharing, and this new blog is one of them (next to tweets @pads_rwth and news items on our home page). The goal is to showcase the work done in the group in an informal manner. Blog posts will report on internal presentations, new research results, new activities, and other exciting developments. The group was founded recently (January 2018), but already approx. 20 group members joined, and many exciting activities have been started. For example, we are involved in the approved Cluster of Excellence – Internet of Production (IoP) where we collaborate with groups working on production systems. We also closely collaborate with Uniklinik RWTH Aachen on process mining in healthcare. In 2019, we will organize three conferences: the first International Conference on Process Mining (ICPM 2019), the 40th annual Conference on Application and Theory of Petri Nets and Concurrency (ATPN2019), and the 19th International Conference on Application of Concurrency to System Design (ACSD 2019). In short: “Data Science in Action” and  Aachen is where the action is.

Picture: Alexander von Humboldt professorship awarded to prof. Wil van der Aalst by the Federal Minister Anja Karliczek in May 2018.

These are exciting times for a research group working on the interface between process science and data science. The interest in process mining is booming, and many of our research results are directly applied in industry. At the same, we are working on foundational problems related to process discovery, conformance checking, and performance analysis. With Fraunhofer FIT, we work on automated, data-driven process improvement and our dream is to provide tools that suggest process redesigns based on domain knowledge and event data. Topics such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Case Management (CM), Business Process Management (BPM) can also greatly benefit from process mining. The work done by the chair has led to a new breed of analytics tools. Currently, there are about 25 organizations providing process mining tools on a commercial basis. At the same time, we feel responsible for developing data science techniques protecting people from irresponsible uses of event data. Topics such as fairness, accuracy, confidentiality, and transparency need to be addressed urgently. Therefore, our research on responsible process mining nicely completes the research portfolio of our group. The Alexander von Humboldt professorship awarded to me by the Federal Minister Anja Karliczek in May 2018, enables us to attract young talent to come to Aachen to work on these topics. If you are interested in joining us, please let us know!

We hope that you enjoy the subsequent blog posts!

Wil van der Aalst