"Big Data Analytics for Business – Findings, Challenges and Opportunities" by Prof. Dr. Dirk Van den Poel

Upon a proposal from the University of Namur (Department of Business Administration and NaDI, the Namur Digital Institute), the Francqui Foundation has awarded a Francqui Chair for the 2017-2018 academic year to Prof. Dr. Dirk Van den Poel from Ghent University, a renowned specialist in the field of Data Analytics and Big Data.

Dirk Van den Poel (PhD) is Senior Full Professor of Big Data Analytics at Ghent University, Belgium.

He received his degree in Business Engineering as well as his PhD from KULeuven (Belgium).

Currently, he teaches courses such as Statistical Computing, Big Data, Analytical Customer Relationship Management, Social Media and Web Analytics, and Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics at Ghent University.

He co-founded the advanced Master of Science in Marketing Analysis, the first (predictive) analytics master program in the world as well as the Master of Science in Statistical Data Analysis and the Master of Science in Business Engineering/Data Analytics.

His major research interests are in the field of analytical CRM (Customer Relationship Management) including customer acquisition, churn, upsell/cross-sell, and win-back modeling.

His methodological interests include ensemble classification methods and big data algorithms and methods.

He has graduated 15+ PhDs in the field of Big Data Analytics.

He has co-authored 110+ international peer-reviewed (ISI-indexed) publications in journals such as Journal of Statistical Software, Journal of Applied Econometrics, Applied Geography, European Journal of Operational Research, IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, Annals of OR, Information and Management, Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, and Decision Support Systems.