The UGent Business Informatics research group, previously called the Ghent University Management Information Systems (UGentMIS) research group, was founded within the Department of Business Informatics and Operations Management (EB24) at the end of 2005. At that time, Geert Poels decided to form a research group with his two junior assistants Ann Maes and Frederik Gailly, and Professor Roland Paemeleire who was Dean of the Faculty. Until October 1, 2002, when Professor Poels joined Ghent University, Professor Paemeleire was the only Information Systems professor at the Faculty. Initially, the group focused its research on the application of conceptual modeling (research interest of Professor Poels) to the design of accounting information systems (research interest of Professor Paemeleire). Early research topics included quality evaluation of semantic accounting data models and design of such models using ontology-based model patterns. The research on enterprise ontology resulted in the group’s first PhD graduation in December 2008 (Professor Frederik Gailly).

Following the retirement of Professor Paemeleire in 2008, Professor Poels joined forces with Ghent University College lecturers Manu De Backer and David Martens, Information Systems professors at the Department of Commercial Sciences and Public Administration, and together they founded the Ghent University Association research group (AOG) Information and Knowledge Management, which officially started on February 1, 2009. As a result, new research lines were added: Business Process Management (BPM) (Professor De Backer) and data mining and business intelligence (Professor Martens). In this period the group also grew in size as a result of project acquisition with funding organizations like the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO), the Special Research Fund Ghent University (BOF), and the Ghent University College Research Fund. At the end of 2010, Professor Martens left the group, to be replaced temporarily by Professor Christophe Mues (Southampton Management School) and later, on January 25, 2013 by Professor Amy Van Looy, a PhD graduate of the group who defended her PhD dissertation in December 2012. While the exit of professors Martens and Mues lead to a de-emphasis of the financial application focus of the data mining research line (still Dr. Gert Loterman graduated in September 2013 on prediction of loss given default), Professor Van Looy strengthened the BPM research line with her research on BPM maturity models and the data mining research is re-orientating towards BPM applications (e.g., business process mining). Due to the integration of the former Ghent University College Department of Commercial Sciences and Public Administration into the Ghent University Faculty of Economics and Business Administration on October 1, 2013 and the subsequent incorporation of professors De Backer and Van Looy into the EB24 department and the UGent Business Informatics research group on October 1, 2014, the AOG was discontinued.

Meanwhile, on October 1, 2011, the UGent Business Informatics research group became part of the Ghent University – Vrije Universiteit Brussel Strategic Alliance research group (ALO) Information Systems. VUB professor Gailly, who left his UGent position of FWO postdoctoral fellow on September 30, 2010, hence rejoined the research group, adding the ontology engineering research line. When Professor Gailly became a BOF tenure track professor at UGent – EB24 on October 1, 2012, he was replaced at VUB initially by Professor Sven Casteleyn, and later by Professor Wouter Verbeke, who specializes in business analytics research. The formation of the ALO resulted in the startup of a first joint UGent – VUB PhD in Information Systems (Dr. Nadejda Alkhaldi who graduated in 2017).

After Professor Manu De Backer left the group, professors Geert Poels, Frederik Gailly and Amy Van Looy were joined in October 2019 by Professor Seppe vanden Broucke who revitalized the Business Analytics research line. Before that, Professor Jan Devos from the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture also joined the group as an affiliated professor to strenghten the research on IT governance, management, and cybersecurity. The appointment of Professor Frederik Gailly as Vice-Dean of Education allowed hiring two guest professors, both PhD graduates from UGent Business Informatics: Professor Michael Verdonck (graduated in 2018) and Professor Steven Mertens (graduated in 2019). This strong team ‘delivered’ 20 PhD graduates since 2008, including many current and affiliated UGent Business Informatics research group members. See our PhDs page for a full overview.

Today, in 2024, the UGent Business Informatics group counts about 30 members including one senior full professor (Geert Poels), two associate professors (Amy Van Looy, Frederik Gailly), one assistant professor (Seppe vanden Broucke), one affiliated professor (Jan Devos from the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture), three part-time guest professors (Michael Verdonck, Steven Mertens, Arne Buchwald), and about five full-time or part-time Post-Doctoral researchers and fifteen PhD candidates. See our members page for a full overview.