prof.dr. W (Wolf) Ketter

Biography

Wolfgang Ketter is Professor of Next Generation Information Systems at the Rotterdam School of Management (RSM), Erasmus University, where he has been affiliated since 2007. Since 2017, he has held this position on a part-time basis, alongside his senior academic appointment in Germany. At RSM, he is Academic Director of the Erasmus Centre for Data Analytics and founder of the Learning Agents Research Group. Prior to 2017 he was Director of the Erasmus Centre for Future Energy Business and Chair of the annual Erasmus Energy Forum.

In parallel, Professor Ketter is fulltime Chaired Professor of Information Systems at the Faculty of Management, Economics, and Social Sciences at the University of Cologne, a position he has held since 2017. He coordinates the University of Cologne’s Key Research Initiative on Sustainable Smart Energy and Mobility, a cross-faculty research effort focused on intelligent market design, digital infrastructure, and policy-relevant solutions for the energy and mobility transition. He also serves as Vice-Director of the Centre for Data and Simulation Science at the University of Cologne.

His research addresses the wicked problems of sustainability by exploiting rapidly advancing computing power and intelligent systems to design, test, and govern new market mechanisms. A defining contribution of his work is the development of competitive benchmarking as a research paradigm, in which communities of researchers compete and learn from one another using shared simulation environments and continuous stakeholder-driven alignment. A flagship example is Power TAC, the leading open simulation platform for future sustainable electricity markets, which he co-founded and continues to chair.

Professor Ketter is an advisor to the European Commission as well as German federal and state governments on energy economics, artificial intelligence for sustainability, and electricity and mobility market design. He is a Fellow of the World Economic Forum and has served on the WEF Global Future Council on Energy and Mobility, where he has played a leading role in market-design work and policy reports on dynamic and true-cost pricing. His current focus includes mobility and large real estate applications as well as numerous other industrial partners across energy, mobility, and digital markets.

Professor Ketter received his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Information Systems from the University of Minnesota (USA) in 2007. He began his academic career at Rotterdam School of Management as an Assistant Professor, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2011, and to Full Professor in July 2013 - one of the fastest promotion trajectories at this University. He is internationally recognised as a leading expert in the economics-based design of technology artefacts and sustainable smart markets. He has served as general or program chair of more than 20 international conferences and workshops.

His research has been published in top-tier journals including MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Management Science, Energy Economics, Energy Policy, Machine Learning, Decision Sciences, and AI Magazine, as well as in over 250 international conference papers. He has supervised twenty Ph.D. students and made foundational contributions across Information Systems, Machine Learning, Energy Economics and Policy, Computer Science, and Management Science.

Professor Ketter serves on the editorial boards of MIS Quarterly and Information Systems Research. His work has received multiple international distinctions, including twice the INFORMS ISS Design Science Award, ISR Best Paper Award in 2020, the INFORMS ISS Impact Award, the AIS–CIO Best European IS Paper Runner-Up Award, the ERIM Top Article Award, and the ERIM Impact Award, recognising both scientific excellence and societal impact.