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Acknowledgements

Many individuals and organizations contributed to the techniques and tools de-
scribed in this book. Therefore, it is important to acknowledge their support, efforts,
and contributions.
All of this started in 1999 with a research project named “Process Design by
Discovery: Harvesting Workflow Knowledge from Ad-hoc Executions” initiated by
Ton Weijters and myself. At that time, I was still working as a visiting professor
at the University of Colorado in Boulder. However, the research school BETA had
encouraged me to start collaborating with existing staff in my new research group
at TU/e (Eindhoven University of Technology). After talking to Ton it was clear
that we could benefit from combining his knowledge of machine learning with my
knowledge of workflow management and Petri nets. Process mining (at that time we
called it workflow mining) was the obvious topic for which we could combine our
expertise. This was the start of a very successful collaboration. Thanks Ton!
Since then many PhD students have been working on the topic: Laura Maruster,
Ana Karla Alves de Medeiros, Boudewijn van Dongen, Minseok Song, Chris-
tian Günther, Anne Rozinat, Carmen Bratosin, R.P. Jagadeesh Chandra (JC) Bose,
Ronny Mans, Maja Pesic, Joyce Nakatumba, Helen Schonenberg, Arya Adriansyah,
and Joos Buijs. I’m extremely grateful for their efforts.
Ana Karla Alves de Medeiros was the first PhD student to work on the topic
under my supervision (genetic process mining). She did a wonderful job; her thesis
on genetic process mining was awarded with the prestigious ASML 2007 Promo-
tion Prize and was selected as the best thesis by the KNAW research school BETA.
Also Boudewijn van Dongen has been involved in the development of ProM right
from the start. As a Master student he already developed the process mining tool
EMiT, i.e., the predecessor of ProM. He turned out to be a brilliant PhD student and
developed a variety of process mining techniques. Eric Verbeek did a PhD on work-
flow verification, but over time he got more and more involved in process mining
research and the development of ProM. Many people underestimate the importance
of a scientific programmer like Eric. Tool development and continuity are essen-
tial for scientific progress! Boudewijn and Eric have been the driving force behind
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