---
title: Wil van der Aalst
type: entity
tags: [researcher, bpm, process-mining, founder, hub]
affiliation: RWTH Aachen University, Germany (primary); formerly TU Eindhoven
sources: ["[[sources/2011-vanderaalst-process-mining-book]]", "[[sources/2012-vanderaalst-process-mining-manifesto]]", "[[sources/2008-pesic-declare-manual]]"]
created: 2026-04-13
updated: 2026-04-20
---

# Wil van der Aalst

Founding figure of **process mining** and one of the most cited researchers in BPM. Hub node across this wiki.

## Authored works in this wiki
- [[sources/2011-vanderaalst-process-mining-book]] — *Process Mining: Data Science in Action* (Springer, 1st ed. 2011, 2nd ed. 2016). The definitive textbook of the field; second foundational BPM textbook in this wiki alongside [[sources/2018-dumas-fundamentals-of-bpm|Dumas et al. 2018]].
- [[sources/2012-vanderaalst-process-mining-manifesto]] — led the IEEE Task Force authoring the *Process Mining Manifesto*; short rallying-call counterpart to the textbook. *(stub, not deep-ingested — PDF not in `raw/`)*
- [[sources/2008-pesic-declare-manual]] — co-authored with Maja Pesic and Helen Schonenberg; prototype manual for the [[frameworks/declare|DECLARE]] declarative modelling language.

## Role in the wider wiki

The APM Manifesto ([[sources/2026-calvanese-agentic-bpm-manifesto]]) positions itself explicitly as successor to the Process Mining Manifesto; Van der Aalst is the named predecessor even though he is not an APM author.

The entire `raw/Predictive process monitoring/` corpus builds on Ch. 10 of his 2011/2016 textbook ([[concepts/operational-support]] — detect / predict / recommend).

## Conceptual contributions attributed

- **Three types of process mining** — discovery, conformance, enhancement.
- **Four quality dimensions** — fitness, precision, generalisation, simplicity ([[concepts/process-model-quality]]).
- **Refined process mining framework** (cartography / auditing / navigation × offline / online) — the [[concepts/process-mining-spectrum]].
- **α-algorithm** — the first foundational process-discovery algorithm.
- **Alignments** — dominant modern [[concepts/conformance-checking]] technique.
- **Lasagna / Spaghetti** characterisation — [[concepts/lasagna-spaghetti-processes]].
- Co-developed [[frameworks/declare|DECLARE]] and the declarative process-modelling tradition ([[concepts/declarative-process-modelling]]).
- Advocated **process mining 2.0** (insights → action) with Dumas — see [[sources/2021-dumas-process-mining-2-from-insights-to-action]].

## Affiliations
Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) — primary affiliation through the 2011/2016 book; Scientific Director of Data Science Center Eindhoven (DSC/e) from 2013. Later moved to RWTH Aachen University (Germany). Long-standing leadership of the ProM open-source platform and the IEEE Task Force on Process Mining.