Dr Ralf Müller is Professor of Project Management at BI Norwegian Business School, Norway and their former Associate Dean for the BI-Fudan executive programs. He is also adjunct professor at the University of Technology Sydney, and distinguished scholar at Dalian University of Technology in China. In the past, he was Professor of Business Administration at Umeå University, Sweden, and held adjunct and visiting professor positions at SKEMA Business School in France; TIAS Business School, Netherlands; University of Economics and Business, Austria; ISM University, Lithuania; Henley Business School, UK; and Tasly Pharmaceuticals Project Management School, China. He lectures in Master’s, doctoral and executive programs and researches in leadership, governance and organizational project management. Herein he taught about 350 PhD candidates in doctoral-level research methods for SKEMA Business School, France, Tsinghua University in China, and Umeå University in Sweden. He supervised 14 doctoral (PhD/DBA) candidates to successful completion, and was opponent to 31 doctoral candidates. Currently he supervises three doctoral candidates.

He is a co-founder of the Project Management Institute’s (PMI) first European Chapter, the Frankfurt Chapter, as well as the Munich Chapter and the Institute for Project Management at the University of Iceland. Currently he is the Chairperson of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Association of International Project Management Officers (AIPMO), member of the Senate and member of the Doctoral Committee at ISM University in Lithuania, and associated member of the Project Management Research Chair at the University of Quebec in Montreal, Canada. In addition he was the co-organizer of the 2013 IRNOP conference at BI Norwegian Business School, and since 2003 member of conference organizing committees for EURAM, IRNOP, and other project management related academic conferences. Since 2003 he has received research grants in the excess of € 1 million from institutions like the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), the Project Management Institute (PMI), and the Norwegian Center of Project Management (Prosjekt Norge).

His studies addressed governance, leadership, organizational project management, and research-informed standards. The results of his research appeared in more than 270 publications including leading peer reviewed journals like Long Range Planning, IEEE Transaction on Engineering Management (both ranked ABS 3*), and International Journal of Project Management (ranked among Top 10% of all management journals), as well as books at NVI level 2 listed publishers like Edward Elgar, Oxford University Press, and Cambridge University Press. He is frequent speaker at global research conferences such as IRNOP (International Research Network for Organizing by Projects) and the European Academy of Management Conference, as well as practitioner conferences, such as those of NASA, PMI and IPMA (International Project Management Association). In parallel, he is the Managing Director of PM Concepts AB, a Sweden-based management consultancy, advising larger corporations and governments, such as SAP, IBM, Volvo, or the Ministry of Interior in Lithuania. Prior to joining academia, he was the Worldwide Director of Project Management at NCR Corporation’s Headquarters in Dayton, OH, USA, where he also was a member of the global leadership team of the corporation’s Professional Services line of business. He has worked in 50+ different countries for the improvement of project management in large organizations and governments. Projects he worked on span from small up to USD 5 billion in value. In these projects, he worked closely with AT&T and Bell Laboratories, USA. Ralf Müller holds a Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) degree from Brunel University, UK and an MBA from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, UK, as well as Master’s Certificates in Global Business Management and in Project Management from George Washington University, USA. Furthermore, he holds a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification from PMI, USA. Ralf received 18 awards in recent years, including two lifetime achievement awards from PMI, USA and Antura, Sweden, two Fellow Awards from PMI and the Centre for Excellence in Project Management, two IPMA Research Awards for studies on leadership and Project Management Offices (PMO), the Walt Lipke Project Governance Excellence and Control Award for his work on organizational project management, and a number of best paper, best reviewer, and best supervisor awards from Universities, journals and conferences. A recent study by Stanford University identified him as among the top 2 percent of the world’s most influential scientists. His doctoral thesis was ranked by EDAMBA as among the top 10 doctoral theses in business and management in 2003. Ralf Müller is Editor-in-Chief for the Project Management Journal (a leading academic journal in project management research), and serves at the Editorial Review Board of seven other academic journals. He is a member of the Academy of Management, the Project Management Institute (PMI), the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations in the US, and the Royal Institute of Philosophy in the UK. He contributed to the PMI Standards for Organizational Project Management Maturity (OPM3), as well as those for Program Management and for Portfolio Management. He frequently consults ISO and other global institutions in governance related subjects.