Dr. Chen is a full professor and the director of the Engineering Management Program in the College of Engineering and Computing at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, Florida. Prior to the appointment, Dr. Chen was a professor and the graduate programs director of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) Department at FIU for twenty years. His professional interest is in the subject areas of enterprise systems engineering, engineering project management, business process modeling and reengineering, sustainable manufacturing, and product and production systems design methodology. He is particularly interested in design and implementation of enterprise systems for engineering to order (ETO) operations, considering the product development process as a production activity. He has periodically conducted theoretical and applied research projects and published findings in academic journals and technical conferences in these subject areas. Dr. Chen received his Ph.D. degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech).

Luis Rabelo, Ph.D., is the NASA EPSCoR Project Manager at the John F. Kennedy Space Center in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Systems at the University of Central Florida. He received dual degrees in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering from the Technological University of Panama and Master’s degrees from the Florida Institute of Technology and the University of Missouri-Rolla. He received a Ph.D. in Engineering Management from the University of Missouri-Rolla in 1990, where he also did Post-Doctoral work in Nuclear Engineering and Artificial Intelligence in 1990-1991. He holds dual MS degrees in Aerospace Systems Engineering & Management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He has over 240 publications, three international patents, and graduated 14 Doctoral students as advisor. His experience includes Ohio University, BF Goodrich Aerospace, Honeywell Laboratories, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NASA, and MIT. He has received many awards among them ONE NASA and Fulbright.

Nasser S. Abouzakhar is a senior lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire, UK. Currently, his research area is mainly focused on critical infrastructure security, industrial control systems security and applying machine learning solutions to various Internet and Cyber security related problems. He received MSc (Eng) in Data Communications in 2000 followed by PhD in Computer Sci Engg in 2004 from the University of Sheffield, UK. Nasser worked as a lecturer at the University of Hull, UK in 2004-06 and a research associate at the University of Sheffield in 2006-08. He is a technical studio guest to various BBC World Service Programmes such as Arabic 4Tech show, News hour programme and Breakfast radio programme. Nasser is a BCS assessor for the accreditation of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the UK, BCS chartered IT professional (CITP), CEng and CSci. His research papers were published in various international journals and conferences.

Qingde Li received the BSc in mathematics from Beijing Normal University in 1982 and PhD in computer science from the University of Hull in 2002. Dr. Qingde Li has been a Lecturer in Computer science at the University of Hull since 2001. Previously he was a professor and the deputy head of Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Anhui Normal University, China. He was a visiting scholar in the Department of applied Statistics at the University of Leeds from Oct 1990 to May 1992, and in the Department of Computing at the University of Bradford from Sept 1996 to Aug 1997. Before he joined the department, his research interests were mainly with fuzzy sets and random sets. His most current research interests are in the area of 3D graphics, such as shape modeling, medical image processing and visualization, GPU-based scientific simulation and special graphics effects. His most recent notable research contributions have been the development of two mutually related spline techniques, namely, PSP-spline (PSPS) and 2D solid spline (2DSS), where PSPS is simpler than B-spline in its mathematical representation but much more powerful than NURBS in geometric design, and 2DSS is a kind of area spline technique, which is a powerful tool for freeform solid modelling.

Viliam Makis has received his PhD from Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague in 1981. Currently, he is working as a Full Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto. He has successfully completed his Administrative responsibilities as the Chair of the Engineering Science Option: Manufacturing Systems at the University of Toronto in 2000. He is serving as an editorial member of several reputed journals such as Advances in Operations Research (as an Editor), Journal of Mathematical and Computational Science (as an Editor), Central European Journal of Engineering (as an Editor, Industrial Engineering), Journal of Quality in Maintenance Engineering. He has authored or co-authored 70 research articles published in refereed journals, 65 papers published in Conference Proceedings, 100 conference presentations, 3 books as the first author and 6 chapters in books. He is a senior member of the Institute of Industrial Engineers, American Society for Quality, a member of INFORMS and CORS. He has been honored as a Fellow of the Int. Society of Engineering Asset Management (FISEAM) in October 2011.

.B. Turksen received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Industrial Engineering and the Ph.D. degree in Systems Management and Operations Research all from the University of Pittsburgh, PA. He joined the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering at the University of Toronto and became Full Professor in 1983. In 1984-1985 academic year, he was a Visiting Professor at the Middle East Technical University and Osaka Prefecture University. Since 1987, he has been Director of the Knowledge / Intelligence Systems Laboratory. During the 1991-1992 academic year, he was a Visiting Research Professor at LIFE, Laboratory for International Fuzzy Engineering, and the Chair of Fuzzy Theory at Tokyo Institute of Technology. During 1996 academic year, he was Visiting Research Professor at the University of South Florida, USA, and Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey. Since December 2005, he is appointed as the Head of Department of Industrial Engineering at TOBB Economics and Technology University. He was and/or is a member of the Editorial Boards of the following publications: Fuzzy Sets and Systems, Approximate Reasoning, Decision Support Systems, Information Sciences, Fuzzy Economic Review, Expert Systems and its Applications, Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence, Information Technology Management, Transactions on Operational Research, Fuzzy Logic Reports and Letters, Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology, Failures and Lessons Learned in Information Technology, Applied Soft Computing. He is the co-editor of NATO-ASI Proceedings on Soft Computing and Computational Intelligence, and Editor of NATO-ASI Proceedings on Computer Integrated Manufacturing as well co-editor of two special issues of Robotics and Autonomus Systems. He is a Fellow of IFSA and IEEE, and a member of IIE, CSIE, CORS, IFSA, NAFIPS, APEO, APET, TORS, ACM, etc. He is the founding President of CSIE. He was Vice-President of IIE, General Conference Chairman for IIE International Conference, and for NAFIPS in 1990. He served as Co-Chairman of IFES'91 and Regional Chairman of World Congress on Expert Systems, WCES'91, WCES'94, WCES'96 and WCES'98, Director of NATO-ASI'87 on Computer Integrated Manufacturing and Co-Director of NATO-ASI'96 on Soft Computing and Computational Intelligence. He was General Conference Chairman for Intelligent Manufacturing Systems, IMS '1998, IMS '2001, IMS`2003. He was the President of IFSA during 1997- 2001 and Past President of IFSA, International Fuzzy Systems Association during 2001-2003. Currently, he is the President, CEO and CSO, of IIC, Information Intelligence Corporation. He received the outstanding paper award from NAFIPS in 1986, "L.A. Zadeh Best Paper Award" from Fuzzy Theory and Technology in 1995, "Science Award" from Middle East Technical University, and an "Honorary Doctorate" from Sakarya University. He is a Foreign Member, Academy of Modern Sciences. His current research interests centre on the foundations of fuzzy sets and logics, measurement of membership functions with experts, extraction of membership functions with fuzzy clustering and fuzzy system modeling. His contributions include, in particular, Type 2 fuzzy knowledge representation and reasoning, fuzzy truth tables, fuzzy normal forms, T-formalism which is a modified and restricted Dempster's multi-valued mapping, and system modeling applications for intelligent manufacturing and processes, as well as for management decision support and intelligent control. He has published 145 SCI journal papers in scientific journals and many conference proceedings. His first book entitled : "An Ontological and Epistemological Perspective of Fuzzy Theory" was published by Elsevier, The Netherlands, in January, 2006. (ISBN-10: 0-444-51891-6, ISBN-13: 978-0-444-51891-0) His second book: Celikyilmaz, Asli, Türkşen, I. Burhan, entittled: Modeling Uncertainty with Fuzzy Logic, With Recent Theory and Applications Series: Studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing , Vol. 240 2009, XLVIII, 400 p. 118 illus., Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-540-89923-5 Online version available March 2009. He is currently working on 2 more books: 1) in English and 2) in Turkish!! Area of Research • Knowledge/Intelligence Discovery Theoretical research : Foundations of Fuzzy Logic, Fuzzy Truth Tables, Fuzzy Canonical Forms, Type 2 Knowledge Representation and Inference, Intelligent Systems, Computational Intelligence, Neuro-Fuzzy Integration, Linguistics to Computations, Signs and Semiotic Systems, knowledge/intelligence-data mining, T-formalism, and Belief and Probabilities over Type 2 fuzzy sets. Applied Research : Development of an integrated knowledge representation and inference for industrial use, fuzzy cluster analysis, unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning, neural networks, supervised learning, neuro-fuzzy modeling, parametric t-norm and t-conorm selection, robotics and industrial process planning and control, production planning and scheduling, consumer preference analysis, client credit worthiness, client segmentation, intelligent manufacturing system development, intelligent pharmacology modeling, intelligent bandwidth allocation on networks and QoS routing for SLA's on the internet. • Information Systems Data Mining : Data reduction, learning from data, statistical methods, cluster analysis, decision trees, neural networks, evolutionary computing, fuzzy logic, etc. Data Modeling : Object oriented and relational data models, development of normal forms, relational calculus and algebra, and data access languages, SQL, QBE, ACCESS, etc. Distributed Information Systems : Network infrastructures, fragmentation, decomposition and distribution methods, data access languages for distributed systems, transaction management and protocols Ongoing Research Projects • System Analysis, Diagnosis and Prediction o Scheduling of Industrial Processes such as continuous casting in steel plants. o Analysis and Diagnosis of Pharmacological data, such as alcohol dependence and lithium retention. o De-sulfurization of molten steel. • Intelligent Manufacturing System Modeling o Control of Robotic Manipulators o Robust Robot Control • Knowledge/Intelligence-Data Mining and Systems Modeling for financial data analysis, consumer preference and market share analysis, client credit worthiness, client segmentation "lift" analysis, etc. • Image processing and diagnosis and treatment of cancer cells • Information Technology, internet protocol, bandwidth allocation, routing, QOS provisioning for SLA's, etc. • Network Simulations, fuzzy-reinforcement learning, etc. Visit the Knowledge/Intelligence Systems Laboratory 170 College St (Rear), Haultain Building, Room 305A University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 3G8

Sanjeevikumar Padmanaban received his Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical & Electronics), Master of Technology (Electrical Drives & Control), and Ph.D. degree respectively from Madras University, Pondicherry University, India and Alma Mater Studiorum 1088AD - University of Bologna, Italy in 2002, 2006 and 2012. He pursued his doctoral degree with full comprehensive grant successfully obtained from Ministry of University Research (MIUR), from the government of Italy (Jan. 2009 - Dec. 2011) by securing 120/130 with the merit of first rank among International Competition devoted for one foreign Ph.D scholarship position (Thanks to Prof.Dr.Gabriele Grandi, UniBo, Italy). Also he successfully received full comprehensive grant from Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Bologna, Government of Italy to continue his research as Post-Doctoral Fellow (Jan. 2012 - Dec. 2012). P.Sanjeevikumar worked as a Lecturer in the Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering at IFET College of Engineering, Tamilnadu, India (2002 – 2004, 2006 – 2007), prior to his Ph.D. research studies. Also he worked as Manager Training at Edutech LLC, Dubai, Middle East, UAE and August 2012 to May 2013 he was employed as Associate Professor with the school of Electrical Engineering, VIT University, Chennai, India. Also he has been employed as Assistant Professor (On Contract) with Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, National Institute of Technology (NIT-Puducherry) from July 2013 to December 2013. He has published paper in the area of his research interest Power Electronics and Drives in National, International Conference and Journal. Sanjeevikumar Padmanaban, successfully has won the "Most Excellence Research Paper Award of IET-SEISCON 2013"(devoted for only one research paper out of 75 accepted paper for oral presentation) and also the "Best Research Paper Award in the Domain of Sustainable Power and Energy Systems" for his research paper contribution "Implementation and control of extra high voltage dc-dc boost converter", in The 7th IET International Conference on Sustainable Energy and Intelligent System, IET-SEISCON'13, Chennai (India). 12-14 December 2013. P.Sanjeevikumar involved actively in more than 150 professional bodies either at the level of editor/associate editor /editorial board member/reviewer in India and abroad includes IEEE – Power Electronics, Industrial Electronics, Industrial Application. IEEE Power and Energy System (PES) – Energy Conversion, Power Delivery, Power System, Smart Grid, Sustainable Energy. He was invited as honorary program committee/technical committee/steering committee member/chair for more than 300 various international, national conferences in India and Abroad includes IEEE, in particular JIEEEC 2013(Jordon), IEEE-TENCON 2013 (Australia), PEEE 2013 (Singapore), IEEE-United Symposium-IEEE-SLED 2013-IEEE-PRECEDE 2013 (University of Munich, Germany), IEEE-SSD (PES) 2014 (Barcelona, Spain), IET-PEMD 2014 (Manchester,United Kingdom), IEEE-MELECON 2014 (Beirut, Lebanon), ICEPIT 2014 (Bahrain), PEEE 2014 (Bangkok, Thailand), IET-ACDC 2015 (United Kingdom), SEES 2015 (Singapore). P.Sanjeevikumar was invited and presented as a Key Note Speaker for International Conferences on topic related to "Multiphase-Multilevel AC Drive Technologies" at IET-SEISCON'2012, ICEE'2013, IEEE-ICE-CCN'2013, IET-SEISCON'2013 (India) and ICLTEEE'2014 (Thailand). He was invited as Resource Person and presented as Key Speaker on various topics related to "Modeling and Control of Power Electronics Converter and its Application to Drives and Power Systems" by the Technological Universities/Colleges in India sponsored by CSIR, DRDO, DST etc. Also he was invited to present Guest Lectures on topics to "Power Electronics and Its application to Drive, Power Systems" by the various Technological Universities/Colleges in India. P.Sanjeevikumar organized special session on "Multiphase Drive Technology (High-Phase (more than Three-Phase) Drive Systems)" IEEE-ICIT, South Africa in February 2013, "Multi-Phase Power Conversion" IEEE-MELECON, Beruit, Lebanon April 2014 along with Eminent Expertise Professors in the field of Power Electronics and Drives know through high quality research publications, Prof.Dr. Atif Iqbal, Qatar University, Qatar, Prof.Dr. Haitham Abu-Rub, Texas A&M University, Qatar, Prof.Dr. Gabriele Grandi, University of Bologna, Italy.

Prof. Jose L. Salmeron is Full Professor of Information Systems and Director of the Computational Intelligence Lab of the University Pablo de Olavide (Seville, Spain). He holds degrees (Hons.) and masters in Computer Science and Business Administration and a Ph.D. in Information Systems from University of Huelva. He holds a couple of 6-year research award by Science and Technology Ministry of Spain and leads research projects at national and international levels, including EU-FP7 funded projects over intelligent systems and reasoning in autonomous systems. He has co-authored eight books and has served as a Visiting Scholar at the Texas Tech University, The University of Arizona, and others. At the present, he serves as Editorial board member in Applied Soft Computing journal and others. He is author and co-author of more than 150 journals, conference papers, book chapters and technical reports and he has more than 870 citations from independent researchers. His papers have been published in IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, International Journal of Approximate Reasoning, Expert Systems with Applications, Communications of the ACM, Journal of Systems and Software, Computer Standards & Interfaces, Interacting with Computers, European Journal of Operational Research, and so on. Currently, he is doing research in the area of Fuzzy Cognitive Maps, Soft Computing, Decision Support Systems, and Reasoning in Autonomous Systems.

Fuzzy Cognitive Maps, Soft Computing, Decision Support Systems and Reasoning in Autonomous Systems.

Professor Abu Al-Rub is currently an Associate Professor of Mechanical and Materials Science and Engineering at Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, UAE. He has been an Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University with joint appointments with the Civil Engineering Department, the Materials Science and Engineering Department, Mechanical Engineering Department, and the Texas Transportation Institute since 2007. Currently, he is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Air Force Institute of Technology of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, USA. He received his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Louisiana State University in 2004, and his MS in 2001 and BS in 1999 in Civil Engineering from Jordan University of Science and Technology. Before joining Texas A&M University, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Louisiana State University and an Assistant Professor at Catholic University of America. Professor Abu Al-Rub primary research field of interest is on the development of macro/micro/nano-mechanics-based constitutive models and computational tools that can be used effectively in guiding the design of advanced materials and structural systems. He has published one book and over 200 publications in archival journals, book chapters, and conference proceedings. He has served as the principle/co-principal investigator of more than 25 projects sponsored by various state, federal, and international agencies; he is responsible for more than $10 Million. In addition, he has delivered more than 150 presentations at national and international conferences, professional meetings, and universities including many keynote lectures. Professor Abu Al-Rub is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), Society of Engineering Science (SES), the U.S. Association for Computational Mechanics, ASCE Engineering Mechanics Institute, and the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). He has twice been recognized by The Texas A&M University System with its Student-Led Teaching Excellence Award, in 2009 and 2011. In 2010 he received the Truman R. Jones Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award and the Tenneco Oil Exploration & Production Award for Meritorious Teaching of Engineering Award from the Dwight Look College of Engineering at Texas A&M University. He is also the recipient of the 2005 Achievement Award for the outstanding teaching at Louisiana State University. In 2011, he received the Ferdinand P. Beer and E. Russell Johnston Jr. Outstanding New Mechanics Educator Award from the American Society for Engineering Education. He has been recognized several times for his work on multi-scale computational mechanics. Recently, Professor Abu Al-Rub has been selected among the Scholar Google 100 Most Cited Authors in Civil Engineering. He is on the editorial board of several journals in the area of multi-scale computational mechanics.

Born in Salerno (Italy) in 1987, Debora Sarno is a management engineer and PhD in healthcare operations management. From 2014, she is a research assistant in Logistics at the University of Salerno. As a PMI certified project manager, she is the coordinator of a research project financed by the Italian Ministry of Culture about territorial marketing and ICT. She is also a start upper in the field of nanotechnologies for healthcare.

Pierluigi Siano(M’09) received the M.Sc. degree in electronic engineering and the Ph.D. degree in information and electrical engineering from the University of Salerno, Salerno, Italy, in 2001 and 2006, respectively. Currently, he is an Aggregate Professor with the Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Salerno. His research activities are centered on the integration of renewable distributed generation into electricity networks and smart grids and on the application of soft computing methodologies to analysis and planning of power systems. In these fields, he has published more than 140 technical papers including more than 60 international journal papers that received more than 900 citations with an H-index equal to 18 according to Scopus. Dr. Siano is Associate Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, member of the editorial board of more than 25 International Journals. He has been member of the Scientific Committee of many international conferences. He served as a reviewer and session chairman for many international conferences. He has been a Special Sessions Co-Chair of the IEEE-ISIE 2010. He was Guest Editor of many Special Sections of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS. He is Vice-Chair of the Technical Committee on Smart Grids and a member of the Technical Committee on Renewable Energy Systems of the IEEE IES. He has been Aggregate Professor at University of Salerno of the following courses: • Electrical Systems I (2005) • Technology and economics of energy (2005-2014) • Electrical Systems II (2006) • Automation for Power Systems and Power Plants (2007-2009) • Energy Management (2011-2014) • Laboratory of Technology and economics of energy (2011-2012).

Prof. Ying Tan received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D., in 1985, 1988, and 1997, respectively. From 1997, he was a postdoctoral fellow then an associate professor at University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), then served as director of Institute of Intelligent Information Science and a full professor since 2000. He worked with the Chinese University of HongKong in 1999 and 2004-2005. He was anelectee of 100 talent program of the Chinese Academy of Science in 2005. Now he is a full professor and Ph.D. advisor at Peking University, and director of Computational Intelligence Laboratory at Peking University. He served as the Editor-in-Chief of International Journal of Computational Intelligence and Pattern Recognition, an Associate Editor of IEEE Transaction on Cybernetics, Associate Editor of International Journal of Artificial Intelligence, Associate Editor of International Journal of Swarm Intelligence Research (IJSIR),Associate Editor of International Journal of Intelligent Information Processing, Associate Editor of IES Journal B, Intelligent Devices and Systems, and Advisory Board of International Journal on Knowledge Based Intelligent Engineering, and The Editorial Board of Journal of Computer Science and Systems Biology, and Editor of Springer Lecture Notes on Computer Science, LNCS 7331, 7332, 6145, 6146 (ICSI2010), and LNCS 5263, 5264 (ISNN2008), and Guest Editors of several referred Journals, including Information Science, Softcomputing, Neurocomputing, International Journal of Artificial Intelligence, etc. He is a member of Emergent Technologies Technical Committee (ETTC), Computational Intelligence Society of IEEE.He is a senior member of IEEE and ACM and a senior member of the CIE. He is or was the general chair of the International Conference on Swarm Intelligence (ICSI 2010, ICSI 2011, ICSI 2012, ICSI 2013) and BRICS CCI, Program committee chair of WCCI 2014, 2012 International Conference on Advanced Computational Intelligence (ICACI’2012) and 2008 International Symposium on Neural Networks (ISNN 2008), etc. His research interests include computational intelligence, swarm intelligence and data mining, pattern recognition, intelligent information processing for information security. He has published more than 200 papers in refereed journals and conferences in these areas, published several books and chapters in book, and received 3 patents.

Zeshui Xu received the Ph.D. degree in management science and engineering from Southeast University, Nanjing, China, in 2003. From April 2003 to May 2005, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher with School of Economics and Management, Southeast University. From October 2005 to December 2007, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher with School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. He is a Distinguished Young Scholar of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and a Distinguished Professor of the Chang Jiang Scholars Program of the Ministry of Education of China. He is with the Business School, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China. He has authored seven monographs and contributed more than 360 journal articles to professional journals (see: http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=kd9L_GUAAAAJ). His current research interests include information fusion, group decision making, computing with words, and aggregation operators. Dr. Xu is currently the associate editors of Fuzzy Optimization and Decision Making, Journal of Intelligence Systems, and also a member of Editorial Boards of seventeen professional journals.