Thomas Hanne received master’s degrees in economics and computer science, and a PhD in Economics. From 1999 to 2007 he worked at the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics as senior scientist. Since then, he is Professor for Information Systems at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland and Head of the Competence Center Systems Engineering since 2012. Thomas Hanne is author of more than 200 journal articles, conference papers, and other publications and editor of several journals and special issues. His current research interests include computational intelligence, evolutionary algorithms, metaheuristics, optimization, simulation, multicriteria decision analysis, natural language processing, machine learning, systems engineering, software development, logistics, and supply chain management.

Patrick Siarry was born in France in 1952. He received the Ph.D. degree in computer science and optimization from University Paris VI, Paris, France, in 1986, and the Doctor of Sciences (Habilitation) degree in computer science and optimization from University Paris XI, Orsay, France, in 1994. He was first involved in the development of analog and digital models of nuclear power plants with Electricité de France, Paris. Since 1995, he has been a Professor of Automatics and Informatics with Université Paris-Est Créteil, Créteil, France. His main research interests include computer-aided design of electronic circuits, cognitive intelligence, and the applications of new stochastic global optimization heuristics to various engineering fields, also including the fitting of process models to experimental data, the learning of fuzzy rule bases, and of neural networks.

Biography: Bernard De Baets is a Senior Full Professor and Head of Department at the Department of Data Analysis and Mathematical Modelling of the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering of Ghent University. He is leading the Knowledge-based Systems research unit KERMIT. As a trained mathematician, computer scientist and knowledge engineer, he has developed a passion for multi- and interdisciplinary research. While being deeply involved in fundamental research in three interlaced research threads (knowledge-based, predictive and spatio-temporal modelling), he also aims at innovative applications in the applied biological sciences. He is a prolific writer, with a bibliography comprising over 550 peer-reviewed journal papers (bestowed with various best paper awards), accumulating close to 25000 Google scholar citations. He actively serves the research community, in particular as editor-in-chief of Fuzzy Sets and Systems and as a member of the editorial board of several other journals. Bernard is an Honorary Professor of Budapest Tech (Hungary), a Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Turku (Finland), a Profesor Invitado of the Universidad Central “Marta Abreu” de las Villas (Cuba) and a Professor Extraordinarius of the University of South Africa. He is a fellow of IFSA (International Fuzzy Systems Association), a recipient of the EUSFLAT Scientific Excellence Award and a nominee of the Ghent University Prometheus Award for Research.

Biography: Andries Engelbrecht received the master’s and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from Stellenbosch University, South Africa, in 1994 and 1999, respectively. Prior to 2019, he was with the Department of Computer Science, University of Pretoria, from 1998 to 2018, where he served as the Head of the Department, from 2008 to 2017; the South African Research Chair of artificial intelligence, from 2007 to 2018; and the Director of the Institute for Big Data and Data Science, from 2017 to 2018. He is currently appointed as the Voigt Chair of data science with the Department of Industrial Engineering, with a joint appointment as a Professor with the Computer Science Division, Stellenbosch University. He is the author of two books Computational Intelligence: An Introduction and Fundamentals of Computational Swarm Intelligence. He is the author/co-author of over 370 articles. He currently holds an NRF A-rating. His research interests include swarm intelligence, evolutionary computation, artificial neural networks, artificial immune systems, machine learning, data analytics, and the application of these artificial intelligence paradigms to data mining, games, bioinformatics, finance, and difficult optimization problems.

Biography: Arturas Kaklauskas is a professor at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, in Lithuania; Head of the Department of Construction Management and Property; Laureate of the Lithuanian Science Prize; member of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, Editor of Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, an international journal and associate editor of journal “Ecological Indicators”. He contributed to nine Framework and five Horizon 2020 programmes projects and participated in over 30 other projects in the EU, US, Africa and Asia. The Belarusian State Technological University (Minsk, Belarus) awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in 2014. His publications include nine books and 143 papers in Web of Science Journals. Fifteen PhD students successfully defended their theses under his supervision. His areas of interest include affective computing, intelligent tutoring systems; affective intelligent tutoring systems; Massive open online courses (MOOCS); affective Internet of Things; smart built environment; intelligent event prediction, opinion mining, intelligent decision support systems, life cycle analyses of built environments, energy, climate change, resilience management, healthy houses, sustainable built environments, big data and text analytics, intelligent library, internet of things, etc.

Professor Irina Perfilieva, Ph.D., received the degrees of M.S. (1975) and Ph.D (1980) in Applied Mathematics from the Lomonosov State University in Moscow, Russia. At present, she is full professor of Applied Mathematics in the University of Ostrava, Czech Republic. At the same time, she is head of Theoretical Research Department in the Centre of Excellence IT4Innovations, University of Ostrava, Institute for Research and Applications of Fuzzy Modeling. She is the author or co-author of three books on mathematical principles of fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic, co-editor of one edited monograph and guest editor of many special issues of scientific journals. She published around 200 papers in the areas of multi-valued logic, fuzzy logic, fuzzy approximation, fuzzy relation equations, and image processing. She is member of editorial boards of the journals Fuzzy Sets and Systems, Journal of Computational Intelligence Research, Iranian Journal of Fuzzy Systems, Journal of Uncertain Systems. She works as a member of Programme Committees of the most prestigious International Conferences and Congresses in the areas of soft computing, fuzzy and knowledge-based systems. She is well recognized as a plenary/invited speaker on various international conferences and congresses. For her long-term scientific achievements, she was awarded in the International Conference on Foundations and Applications of Computational Intelligence FLINS 2010. As a co-author of the software for Time Series forecast, she got a special price of the Seoul International Inventions Fair 2010.

Ana Madureira was born in Moçambique, in 1969. She got his BSc degree in Computer Engineering in 1993 from ISEP, master’s degree in electrical and computers engineering–Industrial Informatics, in 1996, from FEUP, and the PhD degree in Production and Systems, in 2003, from University of Minho, Portugal. She became IEEE Senior Member in 2010. She had been Chair of IEEE Portugal Section (2015-2017), Vice-chair of IEEE Portugal Section (2011-2014) and Chair/Vice-Chair of IEEE-CIS Portuguese chapter. She was Chair of University Department of IEEE R8 Educational Activities Sub-Committee (2017-2018). She was IEEE R8 Secretary (2019-2020). She is External Member Evaluation Committee of the Agency for Assessment and Accreditation of Higher Education – A3ES (Agência de Avaliação e Acreditação do Ensino Superior) for the scientific area of Informatics of Polytechnic Higher Education (2012- ). Currently she is Coordinator Professor at the Institute of Engineering– Polytechnic of Porto (ISEP/IPP) and Director of the Interdisciplinary Studies Research Center (ISRC). In the last few years, she was author of more than 150 scientific papers in scientific conference proceedings, journals, and books.

Virgilijus Sakalauskas is Full Professor of Informatics at Vilnius University, Lithuania. His current research interests include application of artificial intelligence methods in research of the financial and currency markets, e-banking, e-government, e-learning, evaluation of risk and management of knowledge exchange processes. Virgilijus Sakalauskas has experience as the program committee co-chair and organiser of the scientific workshops in conferences of ICCS 2006 (Reading, UK), Baltic DB&IS 2006 (Vilnius, Lithuania), EurOPT-2008 (Neringa, Lithuania), BIS2009 and BIS2011 (Poznan, Poland), KORDS-2009 (Vilnius, Lithuania), BIS2010 (Berlin, Germany), BIS2012 (Vilnius, Lithuania).