Professor Ilkka Niemelä was appointed as the President of Aalto University in 2017. Before that he served as the Provost of Aalto University since 2014. He is a professor of computer science widely known of his work in knowledge representation and constraint programming. He has held visiting positions at SRI International, University of Koblenz-Landau, and National ICT Australia. He has also served as the President of Cluster, a consortium of 12 elite European universities in science and engineering, and the chair of Nordic 5 Tech, a strategic alliance of the five leading technical universities in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden.

Professor Niemelä has served in several committees on national higher education and research policy including national research infrastructures, IT for science, autonomy of universities, and sustainable growth for higher education. Currently, he is leading a national effort to create a digital platform for flexible higher education for Finland (Digivision 2030 project). Professor Niemelä has a doctorate from the Helsinki University of Technology in 1993. He is a Fellow of the European Association for Artificial Intelligence and an invited member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters and the Finnish Academy of Technology. He has been decorated for his service as Cross of Merit by the Order of the Lion of Finland as Commander First Class.