Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Organisation
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam is a publicly funded, broad, research-intensive university attended by a wide variety of students of diverse backgrounds In 2012, VU had about 24,500 registered students, most of whom were full-time students. Measured in FTE, the university had 2,250 faculty members and researchers, who were supported by 1,500 administrative, clerical and technical employees. The university’s annual endowment for 2013 is around €450 million. About three quarters of this endowment is government funding, the remainder is made up of tuition fees, research grants, and private funding. The Business Informatics chair is part of the Faculty of Sciences, one of the 11 faculties of the university. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam is ranked 64th globally in the CWTS Leiden Ranking 2014.
Expertise & People
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam identified “Business Process Management” (BPM) as a field of high relevance in 2014. The field is of clear interest to service economy that the Netherlands is, particularly from the viewpoint of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam which is located in the geographic business center of the county, the so-called “Zuidas”. It is here where the headquarters of all major financial institutes are located, e.g. ABN Amro Bank and ING Bank, as well as various other service companies (pension funds, consultancy companies, law firms, accountants, etc.).
In 2014, a new chair was founded as the basis for the development of a BPM group of eminence at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and funding was allocated to expand this group over the next years. In August 2014, prof. Hajo Reijers was appointed as the new chair. Since that time, various BPM courses have been developed and integrated into the educational programs at Bachelor, Master, and Executive levels.
Prof. Hajo Reijers is a well-established senior researcher and educator in the BPM field. He also has ample work experience as a management consultant (Deloitte/Accenture). The focus of his work is on business process innovation. On this topic, he published over 150 scientific papers, chapters in edited books, and articles in professional journals. He has taught courses on process innovation at the undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate level at various universities and institutes, including Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Eindhoven University of Technology. He is also one of the key lecturers at the TIAS Business School in their Service Operations program. Furthermore, Reijers is a co-author of a recent textbook on Business Process Management, which is currently used in about 100 institutes globally. Reijers has a keen interest in the development and exchange of knowledge between industry and academia, which he fosters through his co-founding the Dutch Business Process Management Forum and his managing role for the International BPM Round Table.
Dr. Henrik Leopold is an assistant professor and a highly talented academic in the BPM field. He has taught courses at Humboldt University, the Vienna University of Economics and Business, and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam on BPM topic, in particular about the interplay of BPM and operational policies. He received the TARGION Dissertation Award for the best doctoral thesis in the field of Information Management between 2012 and 2014 and was the runner-up of the McKinsey Business Technology Award 2013. Since 2011, he is a board member of the Berlin BPM Community of Practice. Leopold gained industrial BPM experience within the pharmaceutical division of Bayer in Germany and the USA.