Institute Name:
Eindhoven University of Technology, Computing Science Department
The department consists of five research sections. The section that will contribute to this project is the Information Systems section,. consisting of 9 permanent academic staff, three part-time professors, and a varying number of doctorate students. This section performs research in three areas, namely the formal specification of systems, databases and hypermedia, and decision support systems.
The research on formal specifications has concentrated on modelling and specifying information systems using an enriched Petri-net formalism. A tool, ExSpect, has been developed, and is now being used for defining and simulating systems in a number of projects with industrial partners. Research continues on the relationships between the ExSpect formalism and other formalisms like process algebras, and on the generation of generic system components.
The database group concentrates on object-oriented models. In a joint effort with the University of Antwerp (Belgium) the GOOD database model and query language have been developed. Also, an extensible reference model for hypermedia systems has been proposed and published. Current research efforts concentrate on graphical interfaces for geographical information systems, and on information retrieval techniques for distributed hypertext systems, such as the well known World-Wide Web.
The decision support systems group concentrates on heuristic algorithms for difficult problems, and on the applicability of different types of logic frameworks like modal and deontic logic in this area.
The Eindhoven University is partner in the Dutch research institute SIKS, which unifies all the Dutch research groups in Information and Knowledge Systems.
Researchers associated with the project:
Dr. P. De Bra, Dr. L. Somers, Prof. K. Van Hee, Prof. J. Paredaens, Prof. W. van der Aalst
Brief CVs of Key Researchers:
Name: Dr. P. De Bra
Nationality: Belgian
Academic Qualifications & Experience: Dr. P. De Bra is an associated professor at the department of Computing Science of the Eindhoven University. He is also a part-time professor at the departments of Information and Library Sciences and Computing Science of the University of Antwerp.
Dr. De Bra started his scientific carrier as a database researcher, the field in which he obtained his doctorate in February 1987. His current research interests are in hypermedia design, modeling and information retrieval. Dr. De Bra developed an extensible object-oriented reference model for hyperdocuments, together with dr. G.J. Houben from the Eindhoven University and Y. Kornatzky from the Ben Gurion University of Negev (Israel). This model is designed so as to be used for comparing existing (or future) hypermedia systems, and for alleviating the transition between them, by mapping features of different systems onto each other.
The current research interest of dr. De Bra is the management of large volumes of information in a widely distributed environment, such as the Internet. This issue is both a matter of both careful design and requirements specification and advanced techniques for retrieving information that is distributed world-wide.
Name: Prof. J. Paredaens
Nationality: Belgian
Academic Qualifications & Experience: Jan Paredaens studied Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Brussels and got a doctorate in 1974. He was a research member at Philips Lab in Brussels and became full professor at the University of Antwerp in 1979. He is also associated with the Technical University of Eindhoven, The Netherlands. At these Universities he has research and educational positions in databases and fundamental aspects of computer sience.
Prof. Dr. J. Paredaens is author of five books in computer science, mainly on programming languages and databases. He also published about 100 papers in international journals, conferences and workshops. His research activities are mainly focussed on properties of relational and object-oriented databases, expressive power of query and update languages, visual interfaces for information processing and spatial databases.
He has been a member of the program committee of numerous international conferences and is involved in several international scientific journals.
Name: Dr. L. Somers
Nationality: Dutch
Academic Qualifications & Experience: Lou Somers received his doctorate in theoretical physics at the University of Nijmegen in 1984. For three years he worked as a systems engineer at Philips Data Systems where he has worked a.o. on the design and development of a system for distributed databases and a user interface management system.
Since 1986 Dr. Somers has been working at the Eindhoven University of technology(from 1991 as associate professor, in the area of software engineering). He has managed the development of the software package ExSpect supporting the formal specification and simulation of Information Systems.
Dr. Somers has been involved in several Dutch and European projects, including the ESPRIT project PROOFS, the TEDIS project EDISCAN and the Human Capital and Mobility project MATCH.
Name: K.M. Van Hee
Nationality: Dutch
Academic Qualifications & Experience: Kees van hee is part-time professor of Computer Science and director of Bakkenist Management Consultants b.v. in Amsterdam. His research interests include methods and tools for specification and analysis of systems, in particular information systems and the role of these methods in software engineering. His main application area is business process reengineering in combination with workflow management systems. Another field of interest is decision support systems with a combinatorial problem inside.
Selected Publications:
K.M.v.Hee, L.J.Somers, and M.Voorhoeve.(1989): "Executable Specifications for Distributed Information Systems", E.D.Falkenberg, P.Lindgreen (eds.), Information system concepts: an in-depth analysis, pp. 139-156, North-Holland
L.J.Somers, M.Voorhoeve, and K.M.v.Hee.(1993): "Improving Software Design Quality with ExSpect: An Application of CASE-based Prototyping in Real-World Situations", Proceedings of the Sixth International Workshop on Computer-Aided Software Engineering, Singapore
P. De Bra, G.J. Houben, Y. Kornatzky. (1994): A Formal Approach to Analyzing the Browsing Semantica of Hypertext, Proceedings of the CSN-94 Conference, pp. 78-89.
M. Gyssens, J. Paredaens, D. Van Gucht.(1994): A Grammar-Based Approach towards Unifying Hierarchical Data Models, SIAM Computing, Vol 23, 6, pp.1093-1137.
M. Gyssens, J. Paredaens, J. Van den Bussche, D. Van Gucht.(1994): A Graph-Oriented Object Database Model, Technical Report 327 CSD Indiana University, UIA Rapport 91-27, 48 p., IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, Vol. 6, 4, pp. 572-586
K.M. van Hee,(1994): Information Systems Engineering: a formal approach Cambridge University Press, 1994. (421 pages)
Name: Prof. W. van der Aalst
Nationality: Dutch
Academic Qualifications & Experience: Dr. ir. W.M.P. van der Aalst is an associate professor at the department of Computing Science of the Eindhoven University of Technology. Since 1993 he is also working as a part-time consultant for Bakkenist Management Consultants.
Wil van der Aalst received his Ph.D. from Eindhoven University of Technology in 1992 as a result of four years of reseach in the field of process modeling using high-level Petri nets. Since 1988 he participates in the development and improvement of the Petri-net-based software package ExSpect. In the last 10 years he has developed many techniques for the qualitative and quantitative analysis of processes in various domains, including production, logistics, real-time systems and workflow automation.
His current research interest lies in the area of process modeling, in particular the application of process modeling techniques to information systems, workflow management, business process reengineering and logistics.
Selected Publications:
W.M.P. van der Aalst, Using Interval Timed Coloured Petri Nets to Calculate Performance Bounds, International Conference of Modelling Techniques and Tools for Computer Performance Evaluation, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, nr. 794, pp. 425--444 (1994).
W.M.P. van der Aalst, K.M. van Hee, Business Process Redesign: A Petri-net-based approach, Computers in Industry, 29(1-2), pp. 15-26, (1996).
W.M.P. van der Aalst, Analysis of Railway Stations by means of Interval Timed Coloured Petri Nets, Real-Time Systems, 9(3), pp. 241-263, (1995).
W.M.P. van der Aalst, Interval Timed Coloured Petri Nets and their Analysis, Application and Theory of Petri Nets 1993, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, nr. 961, pp. 453-472, (1993).
W.M.P. van der Aalst, K.M. van Hee, Putting Petri Nets to Work in Industry, Computers in Industry, 25(1), pp. 45-54, (1994).
Contact Details:
Principal Investigator: Dr. Paul De Bra,
Address:Department of Computing Science, Eindhoven University, 2 Den Dolech Str., P.O Box 513, Eindhoven, NL 5600 MB, THE NETHERLANDS
Telephone number: + 31 40 47 2733
Telefax number: + 31 40 46 3992
EMail: debra@win.tue.nl
List of Members