“To successfully use complex information technology to drive contemporary business, the interplay between the requirements of business and the possibilities of technologies needs to be understood in a well-structured way – information system architecture is the basis for this.”

Paul Grefen is a Full Professor and Chair of Information System Architecture in the School of Industrial Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). His current research is positioned at the interface of the application of advanced information technology and the support of flexible collaboration in business, both within and between organizations. It covers four main focal points: architectural design of business information systems, inter-organizational business process management, service-oriented business design and support, and digital business transformation.

Paul Grefen received his PhD in 1992 from the University of Twente on the topic of parallel, high-performance database processing. At UT, he held assistant and associate professor positions in the Computer Science Department. He is a full professor at Eindhoven University of Technology since 2003 in the School of Industrial Engineering. He chaired the Information Systems subdepartment from 2006 to 2014. He was a visiting researcher at Stanford University in 1994, at IBM Almaden Research Center in 2019, at Penn State University in 2019, and at KU Leuven in 2024.

As a researcher and manager he has been involved in various European research projects (WIDE, CrossFlow, CrossWork, GET Service, HORSE, Oedipus, C-MobILE, SHOP4CF) as well as various projects within the Netherlands. He is a member of the editorial boards of the International Journal of Cooperative Information Systems, the International Journal of Production Management and Engineering, the Software Quality Journal and Frontiers in AI. Paul is an editor and author of books on the WIDE, CrossWork, HORSE and C-MobILE projects, and has authored books on business process management, electronic business, service-dominant business engineering, information systems, and blockchain. He is a member of the board of the European Supply Chain Forum.