Prof. Sankar Kumar Pal
Padma Shri Awardee
INSA Distinguished Professor Chair
Distinguished Scientist and former Director
Center for Soft Computing Research
Indian Statistical Institute Kolkata

Title of the Talk: TBA

Prof. Pal Sankar Kumar Pal is a Distinguished Scientist and former Director of the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India. He is a computer scientist with an international reputation on fuzzy neural network, soft computing, and machine intelligence. He founded the Machine Intelligence Unit in 1993, and the Center for Soft Computing Research: A National Facility in 2004, both at the ISI. He is the founder President of the Indian National Academy of Engineering, Kolkata Chapter.

He was awarded Padma Shri in Science and Engineering on 5 April 2013 by the President of India Pranab Mukherjee in recognition of his work in machine intelligence. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the 1990 Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar Award (which is the most coveted award in science in India), the 1999 G.D. Birla Award, 1998 Om Bhasin Award from the Prime Minister of India, 1993 Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship, 2000 Khwarizmi International Award from the President of Iran, 2000-2001 FICCI Award, 1993 Vikram Sarabhai Research Award, 1993 NASA Tech Briefs Award (USA), 1994 IEEE Trans. Neural Networks Outstanding Paper Award (USA), 1995 NASA Patent Application Award (USA), 1997 IETE-R.L. Wadhwa Gold Medal, the 2001 INSA-S.H. Zaheer Medal, 2005-06 Indian Science Congress-P.C. Mahalanobis Birth Centenary Gold Medal from Prime Minister of India for Lifetime Achievement, 2007 J.C. Bose Fellowship of the Government of India, 2008 Vigyan Ratna Award from Science & Culture Organization, 2013 Indian National Academy of Engineering Chair Professor, 2015 INAE-S.N. Mitra Award, 2017 INSA-Jawaharlal Nehru Birth Centenary Lecture Award, and 2018 INSA Distinguished Professor Chair. He is a Padma Shri awardee in 2013.He was elected Fellow of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS), International Association for Pattern Recognition, International Association for Fuzzy Systems, Indian National Science Academy, National Academy of Sciences, India, Indian Academy of Sciences and Indian National Academy of Engineering.

Prof. P. N. Suganthan
Nanyang Technology University
Singapore

Title of the Talk: TBA

Prof. Suganthanreceived the B.A degree, Postgraduate Certificate and M.A degree in Electrical and Information Engineering from the University of Cambridge, UK in 1990, 1992 and 1994, respectively. He obtained his Ph.D. degree from the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He was a predoctoral Research Assistant in the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Sydney in 1995–96 and a lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, University of Queensland in 1996–99. Since 1999 he has been with the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore where he was an Assistant Professor and now is an Associate Professor. He is an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation and Pattern Recognition Journal. His research interests include evolutionary computation, pattern recognition, bioinformatics, biometrics, multiobjective evolutionary algorithms, applications of evolutionary computation and neural networks. He is a senior member of the IEEE.

Prof. B.K.Panigrahi
Department of Electrical Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi

Title of the Talk: TBA

Prof. Panigrahi is presently working as Professor, in the Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Delhi, INDIA. He was in teaching and research profession since 1990. His research interest includes Power System Planning , Operation and Control, Machine Intelligence and Evolutionary Computing. Panigrahi received a Ph.D. in electrical engineering. He is an associate editor for IEEE Systems Journal and a Senior Member of the IEEE. Contact him at bijayaketan.panigrahi@gmail.com

Prof. Ajit K. Verma
Western Norway University of Applied Sciences
Norway

Title of the Talk: TBA

Ajit K. Verma is a Professor in the Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Haugesund, Norway (since March 2012) and has been a Professor (since Feb 2001) with the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT Bombay with a research focus in Reliability and Safety Engineering. He was the Director of the International Institute of Information Technology Pune, on lien from IIT Bombay, from Aug 2009-Sep 2010. He is also a Guest Professor at Lulea University of Technology, Sweden.

He has supervised/co-supervised 38 PhDs and 95 Masters theses in the area of Software Reliability, Reliable Computing, Power Systems Reliability (PSR), Reliability Centred maintenance (RCM) and Probabilistic Safety/Risk Assessment (PSA). He has executed various research projects to promote industry interface and has been course co-ordinator for industry CEPs like Reliability engineering, Six Sigma, Software Inspections, Competency Tracking System and Software Reliability for IT industries. He is the Springer Book Series Editor of Asset Analytics-Performance and Safety Management, Fire safety Engineering and Management and Reliable & Sustainable Electric Power and Energy Systems Management and has jointly edited books titled Reliability and Risk Evaluation of Wind Integrated Power Systems(Springer), Reliability Modelling Analysis of Smart Power Systems (Springer) & Current Trends in Reliability, Availability, Maintainability and Safety(Springer) and is an author of books titled Fuzzy Reliability Engineering-Concepts and Applications (Alpha science international - Narosa), Reliability and Safety Engineering (Springer) and Dependability of Networked Computer Based Systems (Springer), Risk Management of Non-Renewable Energy Systems(Springer) and Optimal Maintenance of Large Engineering Systems(Narosa).

He has over 250 publications in various journals (over 100 papers) and conferences. He is a senior member of IEEE and a life fellow of IETE. He has been the Editor-in-Chief of OPSEARCH published by Springer(Jan 2008-Jan 2011) as well as the Founder Editor-in-Chief of International Journal of Systems Assurance Engineering and Management (IJSAEM) published by Springer and the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Life Cycle Reliability and Safety Engineering. He is also on the editorial board of several international journals. He was a Guest Editor of Special Issue on ‘Reliable Computing’ of International Journal of Automation and Computing (Oct 2007), May 2010, IJSAEM (June 2010) (with Prof Roy Billington and Prof Rajesh Karki) and IJSAEM (March 2011) (with Prof Lotfi A. Zadeh and Prof Ashok Deshpande) and IEEE Transactions on Reliability, March 2011 among others. He was also nominated as a chairman of the “Special Interest Group on System Assurance Engineering and Management' of Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing” by Prof Lotfi A. Zadeh.

Prof. Montaz Ali
Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics
University of the Witwatersrand
Johannesburg

Title of the Talk: TBA

Prof. Ali currently works at the School of Computational and Applied Mathematics (CAM), University of the Witwatersrand. Montaz does research in Global Optimization, Optimal Control, Operations Research, Statistics and Applied Mathematics. Their current project is 'mixed integer nonlinear programming problem, optimization in big data'

Dr. Saman Hassanzadeh Amin
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Ryerson University Toronto, ON, Canada

Title of the Talk: TBA

Dr. Amin,is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at Ryerson University. Prior to joining Ryerson University, he was an Assistant Professor of Supply Chain Management at Cape Breton University in Nova Scotia. Dr. Amin has taught several courses at the University of Windsor, Cape Breton University, and Ryerson University in both business schools and engineering faculties. He has developed some courses at those universities. Dr. Amin’s research expertise includes Supply Chain Management, Operations Management, Operations Research, Optimization, Information Technology, and Decision Support Systems. He has published 30 articles in well-known journals, such as "Journal of Cleaner Production", "Expert Systems with Applications", "International Journal of Production Economics", and "International Journal of Production Research". His publications have received over 1,900 citations to date in Google Scholar. Dr. Amin’s research is externally supported by both NSERC and SSHRC, and includes NSERC Discovery, NSERC Engage, and SSHRC Insight Development grants, displaying his ability to cross disciplines effectively. He has received a number of awards for his work (e.g., Administrative Sciences Association of Canada Conference in 2016).

Prof. Valentina E. Balas
Automation and Applied Informatics
Aurel Vlaicu University of Arad Romania

Title of the Talk: Fuzzy-Interpolative Switching Techniques

Prof. Valentina E. Balas, is currently Full Professor in the Department of Automatics and Applied Software at the Faculty of Engineering, “Aurel Vlaicu” University of Arad, Romania. She holds a Ph.D. Cum Laude, in Applied Electronics and Telecommunications from Polytechnic University of Timisoara. Dr. Balas is author of more than 350 research papers in refereed journals and International Conferences. Her research interests are in Intelligent Systems, Fuzzy Control, Soft Computing, Smart Sensors, Information Fusion, Modeling and Simulation. She is the Editor-in Chief to International Journal of Advanced Intelligence Paradigms (IJAIP) and to International Journal of Computational Systems Engineering (IJCSysE), member in Editorial Board member of several national and international journals and is evaluator expert for national, international projects and PhD Thesis. Dr. Balas is the director of Intelligent Systems Research Centre in Aurel Vlaicu University of Arad and Director of the Department of International Relations, Programs and Projects in the same university. She served as General Chair of the International Workshop Soft Computing and Applications (SOFA) in nine editions organized in the interval 2005-2020 and held in Romania and Hungary. Dr. Balas participated in many international conferences as Organizer, Honorary Chair, Session Chair, member in Steering, Advisory or International Program Committees and Keynote Speaker. Now she is working in a national project with EU funding support: BioCell-NanoART = Novel Bioinspired Cellular Nano-Architectures - For Digital Integrated Circuits, 3M Euro from National Authority for Scientific Research and Innovation. She is a member of European Society for Fuzzy Logic and Technology (EUSFLAT), member of Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) and a Senior Member IEEE, member in Technical Committee – Fuzzy Systems (IEEE Computational Intelligence Society), chair of the Task Force 14 in Technical Committee – Emergent Technologies (IEEE CIS), member in Technical Committee – Soft Computing (IEEE SMCS). Dr. Balas was past Vice-president (responsible with Awards) of IFSA - International Fuzzy Systems Association Council (2013-2015), is a Joint Secretary of the Governing Council of Forum for Interdisciplinary Mathematics (FIM), - A Multidisciplinary Academic Body, India and recipient of the "Tudor Tanasescu" Prize from the Romanian Academy for contributions in the field of soft computing methods (2019).

Mr. Aninda Bose
Senior Editor
Springer New Delhi
India

Title of the Talk: TBA

Mr. Aninda Bose is presently working as a Senior Publishing Editor with Springer India Pvt. Ltd. Mr. Bose is part of the Global Acquisition Team at Springer and responsible for acquisition of scientific content, primarily in India and Southeast Asia. The disciplines he is responsible for are Chemistry, Physics, Material Sciences and Earth Sciences. He has more than 22 years of industrial experience in marketing and different fields of publishing. Mr. Bose has completed Masters in Organic Chemistry from Delhi University and Masters in Marketing Research from Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies, Pune. He has published books for secondary level in Chemistry and a member of American Chemical Society, USA. Mr. Bose has delivered more than 50 talks on Scientific Writing and Publishing Ethics in reputed Universities, International Conferences and Author Workshops.