Proper, Henderik A.

Professor, University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Prof.dr. Henderik A. Proper, Erik to friends, is a senior research manager at the Public Research Centre - Henri Tudor in Luxembourg. He also holds a chair in Information Systems at the Radboud University Nijmegen. He leads a the Enterprise Engineering research team involving researchers from these two institutions, who jointly work on the FNR funded Architecture-based Service Innovation (ASINE) research programme. 

Erik has a mixed background, covering a variety of roles in both academia and industry. His professional passion is the further development of the field of enterprise engineering and enterprise architecture. His long experience in teaching and coaching a wide variety of people enables him to involve and engage others in this development. He has co-authored several journal papers, conference publications and books. His main research interests include enterprise architecture, enterprise engineering, enterprise modelling, systems theory, business/IT alignment and conceptual modelling.

Erik received his Master's degree from the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands in May 1990, and received his PhD (with distinction) from the same University in April 1994. In his Doctoral thesis he developed a theory for conceptual modelling of evolving application domains, yielding a formal specification of evolving information systems.

After receiving his PhD, Erik became a senior research fellow at the Computer Science Department of the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. During that period he also conducted research in the Asymetrix Research Lab at that University for Asymetrix Corp, Seattle, Washington. In 1995 he became a lecturer at the School of Information Systems from the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. During this period he was also seconded as a senior researcher to the Distributed Systems Technology Centre (DSTC), a Cooperative Research Centres funded by the Australian government.

From 1997 to 2001, Erik worked in industry. First as a consultant at Origin, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and later as a research consultant and principal scientist at the Ordina Institute for Research and Innovation, Gouda, The Netherlands.

In June 2001, Erik returned to academia, where he became an adjunct Professor at the Radboud University Nijmegen. In September 2002, Erik obtained a full-time Professorship position at the Radboud University Nijmegen. In Januari of 2008, he went back to combining industry and academia, by combining his Professorship with consulting and innovation at Capgemini, with the aim of more tightly combining his theoretical and practical work. Finally, in May 2010 Erik moved to the Public Research Centre - Henri Tudor in Luxembourg, while continuing his chair at the Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands.