Event Chairs

Juan Julian Merelo University of Granada Spain

Brief Bio
Juan Julian Merelo is professor at the University of Granada, where he has been working since 1988. His main interests are evolutionary algorithms, distributed/parallel computing and computational intelligence in games.

Kevin Warwick (honorary) University of Reading and Coventry University United Kingdom http://www.kevinwarwick.com/

Brief Bio
Kevin Warwick is Professor of Cybernetics at the University of Reading, England, where he carries out research in artificial intelligence, control, robotics and biomedical engineering. He took his first degree at Aston University, followed by a PhD and research post at Imperial College London. He subsequently held positions at Oxford, Newcastle and Warwick Universities before being offered the Chair at Reading. He is a Chartered Engineer (CEng.) and is a Fellow of The Institution of Engineering & Technology (FIET). Kevin Warwick is the youngest person ever to become a Fellow of the City & Guilds of London Institu te (FCGI). He is the author or co-author of more than 500 research papers and has written or edited 27 books (three for general readership), as well as numerous magazine and newspaper articles on scientific and general subjects.
Kevin has been awarded higher doctorates (DSc) both by Imperial College and the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague and has received Honorary Doctorates from 6 Universities. He has appeared in the Guiness Book of Records for his research on several occasions and is perhaps best known for his implant self-experimentation, linking his own nervous system with a computer network.
The Institute of Physics selected Kevin as one of only 7 eminent scientists to illustrate the ethical impact their scientific work can have: the others being Galileo, Einstein, Curie, Nobel, Oppenheimer and Rotblat. ... More >>

Thomas Bäck Leiden University Netherlands

Brief Bio
Thomas Bäck is professor of Computer Science at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science, Leiden University, Netherlands, since 2002.

He received his PhD in Computer Science from Dortmund University, Germany, in 1994, and was leader of the Center for Applied Systems Analysis at the Informatik Centrum Dortmund until 2000.

Thomas received the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) Evolutionary Computation Pioneer Award for his contributions in synthesizing evolutionary computation (2015), was elected as a fellow of the International Society of Genetic and Evolutionary Computation ( ISGEC) for fundamental contributions to the field (2003), and received the best dissertation award from the "Gesellschaft für Informatik" in 1995.

Thomas has more than 300 publications, as well as two books on evolutionary algorithms: Evolutionary Algorithms in Theory and Practice (1996), Contemporary Evolution Strategies (2013). He is co-editor of the Handbook of Evolutionary Computation and the Handbook of Natural Computing. Thomas is also Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Natural Computing Series (Springer) and the journal Theoretical Computer Science C (Elsevier), and editorial board member of various journals.

Thomas’ research interests are in foundations and applications of evolutionary computation, efficient global optimization, and multiple objective optimization. Much of his recent research also addresses optimization methods in machine learning, e.g., for hyperparameter optimization, as well as supervised and unsupervised machine learning for smart industry applications. ... More >>