Ilkka Niemelä is Professor of Computer Science at Aalto University. He has served as the head of the Laboratory for Theoretical Computer Science 2000-2007, as the Chair of the Degree Program of Computer Science and Engineering 2008-2010, as the Dean of Aalto University School of Science Jan 2011-Feb 2012, as the Deputy President of Aalto University Mar 2012-Apr 2014, and since May 2014 as the Provost of Aalto University. Dr. Niemelä received his doctoral degree in computer science in 1993 from Helsinki University of Technology and has worked in 1993 as an International Fellow at SRI International, in 1995-1996 as a research scientist and acting professor in the Department of Computer Science of the University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany and in 1998-2000 as a senior research fellow of the Academy of Finland.

Dr. Niemelä's current research interests include automated reasoning, constraint programming, knowledge representation, computational complexity, computer aided verification, automated testing and product configuration. At Aalto University he leads the computational logic group which has developed a number of the state-of-the-art software tools for automated reasoning, such as the Smodels system for answer set programming and BCSat for Boolean circuit satisfiability checking, leading to applications in areas like automated planning, product configuration, and bounded model checking. He is also one of the Principal Investigators of the Finnish Center of Excellence in Computational Inference Research (COIN). Dr. Niemelä is an author of more than 150 papers, has been a member of the program committee for over 60 international conferences and has given several invited talks and tutorials.

Dr. Niemelä is an EurAI Fellow. He has served as the Editor-in-Chief of Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (2010-2014) and has been an Editorial Board Member of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (2005-2011), a member of the Executive Committee of the Association for Logic Programming (ALP) (2005-2009) as well as a Steering Committee Member of the International Workshops on Nonmonotonic Reasoning (2000-2008), of the International Conferences on Logic Programming and Nonmonotonic Reasoning (2001-), and of the European Conferences on Logics in Artificial Intelligence (JELIA) (2010-).