IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Adcom Election Announcement

I am a Professor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and a core faculty member of the MU Informatics Institute at the University of Missouri (MU). I am also the Director of the Vision-Guided and Intelligent Robotics Laboratory (ViGIR Lab), which currently consists of six PhD, two MS and two undergraduate students. I published over 100 refereed articles in 3D modeling, robotic vision, mobile robot navigation, pattern recognition and computational intelligence. My papers are all peer-reviewed and were published in many journal venues like the IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence and the Journal of Computer Vision and Image Understanding, as well as in very competitive, high-impact conferences and workshops, such as BMVC, ECCV, ICRA, etc. My current and past research projects have been mainly funded by the NSF (including a $20M grant to a consortium of universities and research centers), NIH (R15 and R01), DoD, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the Naval Research Laboratory, the US Department of Agriculture, the Missouri Soybean Merchandising Council, etc.

I have been involved with the IEEE CIS since 2009 by serving as: chair of eleven SSCI Symposia; one of the founding members of a local CIS Chapter; chair and member of the CIS Senior Member Subcommittee for three years; chair and member of the CIS Student Activities Subcommittee for four years; member of the CIS Conference Bid Subcommittee for three years; member of the CIS Young Professionals Subcommittee for three years; member and chair of the CIS Chapters Subcommittee for four years; member of the CIS Social Media Subcommittee for three years; member of the Task Force on Intelligent Cyber-Physical Systems within the IEEE CIS Smart World Technical Committee for one year; chair of the CIS Educational Repository Subcommittee since 2018; chair and member of the CIS Content Capture (formerly Multimedia) Subcommittee since 2018; chair and member of the CIS History Committee since 2018; member of the CIS Webinar Subcommittee for two years; member of the High School Subcommittee (2020-present); associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence since 2020; and the General Chair for IEEE CEC in 2023, in Chicago.

Position Statement:

The CIS has two major challenges ahead: clarify its role in a world awakened about AI; and consolidate the CIS’ role and importance. In the first case, we need to educate academic, industrial, and broader communities about the meaning of CI vis-à-vis AI: their meanings; their relationship; and the importance of CI in achieving all that we expect from AI. This goal can be achieved by teaching the History of CI and of the CIS through the work I started as History Committee’s chair; e.g. the CIS History Timeline, an interactive website where visitors learn about past and future events, watch videos, learn the history of CI, the formation of the CIS, and much more (this Timeline is ready to be deployed); and by producing educational content and further disseminating them through the CIS Resource Center, YouTube, etc. For the second challenge, the CIS has some of the best journals in CI/AI, but our conferences need much improvement.  So, I look forward to continuing to work to improve our flagship conferences: e.g. share my experience making the review process for CEC 2023 two-phase — i.e. with a rebuttal cycle, allowing authors to revise/resubmit ‘borderline’ papers that would otherwise be rejected. 

Pauline Haddow is a Professor at the Department of Computer Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Her main research interests involve both basic and applied research, creating/refining/applying evolutionary computation techniques to achieve complex, adaptive and robust solutions.  Such approaches are tested for the efficient computational needs of today’s and tomorrow's technologies through modelling, simulation and theoretical techniques.  The key techniques investigated include genetic algorithms, multi-objective optimisation, immune systems, neuroevolutionary algorithms and swarm intelligence.

Professor Haddow holds a number of roles in IEEE CIS (CIS) including member of ADCOM; member of the CIS Conference Committee (ConfCcom); chair of the CIS ConfCom Strategic Planning Subcommittee; chair of the CIS Strategic Planning Committee; Chair of the CIS ConfCom Adhoc on Conference Submissions and CIS corresponding member of TAB Strategic Planning Committee. Previous roles in CIS have included  Vice President of Conferences and member of EXCOM; chair of the ConfCom Adhoc on SSCI Restructuring; chair of the ConfCom Adhoc on the Conference Organiser Tool; member of the CIS Adhoc for the IEEE Conference on AI; chair of the ConfCom Bids Subcommitte; member of the CIS Outstanding Career Award sub-committee; chair of the ConfCom Technical co-sponsorship Subcommittee; member of the CIS Outstanding Papers committee; member of the CIS Distinguished Lecturers Program Subcommittee; member of the members activities chapters sub-committee; chair of the CIS EC Technical Committee; vice chair of the CIS Woman in CI Committee; member of the CIS Emergent Technologies TC and member of the CIS Task Force on Evolvable Hardware. Professor Haddow has further been Publicity co-chair for IEEE SSCI 2022, Student grants chair for IEEE SSCI 2021, Program Chair and host of IEEE CEC 2009 as well as contributing to various IEEE CIS conferences and publications.   

Position Statement:

I have been part of the CIS family of dedicated volunteers since 2005 - a respectful and forward thinking environment with many motivated, experienced researchers tackling stimulating challenges. My main contributions to IEEE CIS activities has been within conferences, including VP Conferences as well as more recently, Chair of Strategic Planning and a member of ADCOM since 2021.

I believe that my personal skills as a team player, attention to detail and commitment to excellence together with my IEEE CIS experience to date, provide me with the tools to continue to be an active ADCOM contributor. Within Strategic Planning, I have had the opportunity to gain much experience about the future needs of CIS, across the breadth of CIS. I believe this experience is valuable to ADCOM as is the ADCOM experience valuable to Strategic Planning.

I support a quality, rather than quantity, approach to CIS activities. Further CIS growth depends on us, the volunteers. It will be important to continue to attract new volunteers through providing exciting opportunities, training and support as well as recognition of the contributions that all make to the success of CIS.

Dr. Haibo He (IEEE Fellow) is the Robert Haas Endowed Chair Professor in Electrical Engineering and the Director of the Computational Intelligence and Self-Adaptive (CISA) Laboratory at the University of Rhode Island (URI), Kingston, RI, USA. He has published one sole-author book (Wiley), edited 1 book (Wiley-IEEE) and 6 conference proceedings (Springer), and authored/co-authored many peer-reviewed journal and conference papers, majority of them appeared in the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (IEEE CIS) flagship journals and conferences. His publications received significant societal impacts including numerous highly-cited papers (including a single paper received more than 8000 citations), Best Paper awards, Transaction cover page highlighted paper, and Best Readings. He has been a long time dedicated volunteer for the IEEE CIS and served/serves at various capacities, ranging from the past CIS E-Letter Editor, CIS Website Manager, Chair of the Neural Network Technical Committee (NNTC), Vice Chair of the IEEE CIS Fellow Committee, member of the IEEE Frank Rosenblatt Award committee, a sub-committee member of CIS Awards, Education, Conference, and DLP, to the Editor-in-Chief (EIC) of the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (IEEE TNNLS) from 2016 -2021, a flagship journal of the IEEE CIS. He regularly served/serves at various Chair positions of CIS conferences, including the General Chair of the IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (SSCI’14) and Plenary Co-Chair of the IJCNN 2023. He was a recipient of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) Outstanding Early Career Award (2014), IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC’14) Best Paper Award (2014), National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2011), and Providence Business News (PBN) "Rising Star Innovator" Award (2011). 

Position Statement:

I have had the great honor and privilege to serve the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) at various capacities, which have provided me rich experience covering all the key areas of IEEE CIS. If being elected to the CIS AdCom, I will use my experience and leadership to provide visionary decision-making for the long-term sustainable development of our community. My particular focus will be on increasing the membership participations, especially the diversity representation and academia-industry balance, advancing our society’s technical activities, outreach, and leadership, and further strength the quality and impacts of our CIS journals and conferences. As a long-time dedicated volunteer for IEEE CIS, I will devote all my passion, energy, time, and efforts into the CIS to bring the success of CIS to the next high level. 

HISAO ISHIBUCHI (M’93-SM’10-F’14) received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Kyoto University in 1985 and 1987, respectively, and Ph.D. degree from Osaka Prefecture University in 1992. He was with Osaka Prefecture University in 1987-2017. Since 2017, he is Chair Professor at Southern University of Science and Technology, China. He was IEEE CIS Fuzzy Systems Technical Committee Chair (2008-2009), IEEE CIS Vice-President for Technical Activities (2010-2013), IEEE CIS Distinguished Lecturer (2015-2017, 2021-2023), IEEE CIS AdCom member (2014-2019, 2021-2023), Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine (2014-2019), and Associate Editor of IEEE Trans. on Fuzzy Systems (2004-2014), IEEE Trans. on Evolutionary Computation (2007-2022), IEEE Trans. on Cybernetics (2013-2023), and IEEE Access (2013-2023). He was also Program Chair of IEEE CEC 2010 and IEEE SSCI 2022, General Chair of IEEE CIFEr 2019, Program/Technical Co-Chair of FUZZ-IEEE 2011-2013, 2015 and IEEE CEC 2013, 2014, 2018-2021, 2023, and Area Chair of ECAI 2020, 2023. Currently, he is General Chair of IEEE WCCI 2024 in Japan. He received JSPS Prize in 2007, IEEE CIS Fuzzy Systems Pioneer Award in 2019, IEEE Trans. on Evolutionary Computation Outstanding Paper Award in 2020, and 2023 Enrique Ruspini Meritorious Service Award. He also received a best paper award from GECCO 2004, HIS-NCEI 2006, FUZZ-IEEE 2009, WAC 2010, SCIS & ISIS 2010, FUZZ-IEEE 2011, ACIIDS 2015, GECCO 2017, GECCO 2018, EMO 2019, GECCO 2020 and GECCO 2021.

Position Statement:

In the last 15 years, I have learned a lot from my activities in the IEEE CIS such as Vice-President for Technical Activities, AdCom member, Distinguished Lecturer, IEEE CIM Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editor, and Chair/Co-Chair of many conferences. Currently, I am still learning a lot from my experiences as General Chair of IEEE WCCI 2024. I believe that my current experiences will be efficiently and effectively utilized for the success of future CIS conferences. If elected, I am willing to work hard for another three years as an AdCom member for the IEEE CIS. Especially, I would like to contribute to the following:

(1) to encourage young and female researches to play an important role in our society,

(2) to increase the presence of our society and CI technologies in the AI field,

(3) to foster a friendly and innovative society culture,

(4) to increase the number of submissions to CIS journals, magazine, and conferences,

(5) to increase the number of attendees to CIS conferences and other technical activities,

(6) to increase the number of CI researchers through interdisciplinary outreach activities to potential application fields and geographical outreach activities to countries with large potential growth.

(M’10-SM’12) received his bachelor's and Ph.D. in computer science from Wuhan University, China, in 2001 and 2007, respectively. As a full Professor of the Department of Artificial Intelligence, Xiamen University, an Associate Head of the department, and the Director of the Intelligence Multimedia Laboratory, his primary research interests include swarm intelligence, evolutionary computation, machine learning, robotics, and various application fields. He published one book chapter (World Scientific Publishing), edited one special issue (IEEE) and one conference proceeding (Springer), and authored/co-authored over 90 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers. Prof. Jiang is very active in the international community, annually serving as a reviewer for over ten journals and a PC member/organizing member of 40+ conferences, including WCCI 2024, 2020, 2016, SSCI 2019, AAAI 2022, 2021, 2019, IJCAI 2023, 2022, 2021, etc. He is also an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine, and IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems. In 2016, the IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics awarded Prof. Jiang the Outstanding Reviewer Award, and he also received the Publons Top (1%) Reviewer Award in 2019. Due to his contribution to optimization algorithms, the Chinese Society of Artificial Intelligence awarded Professor Jiang and his collaborators the 2019 Wu Wen-jun Artificial Intelligence Natural Science Award. He has served in the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) in various capacities, ranging from the past Intelligent Systems and Applications Technical Committee (ISATC) Chair, Member of the Emergent Technologies Technical Committee to the current position of the ( Founding) Chair of the IEEE CIS Xiamen Chapter (2016 Best Chapter Award), Member of the Outstanding Organization Award Subcommittee.

Position Statement:

I appreciate the opportunities to serve on the IEEE CIS in various capacities, from Chapter Chair, Associate Editor, and members of various committees to Chairs of Technical Committees, which have offered me rich and pleasant experiences covering all the major areas of IEEE CIS. If elected to the CIS AdCom, I will use my knowledge and expertise to provide suggestions and decision-making for the sustainable development of our community, and I will continue to build bridges between IEEE CIS and local Chinese organizations. I will devote myself to improving the balance of geographical distributions and gender, recruiting junior members, developing solid plans, and advancing our society’s technical activities. I would also like to actively represent young researchers’ needs and options to this important committee and to communicate back decisions and views from AdCom to the researchers.

Nelishia Pillay is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science, University of Pretoria, South Africa, where she previously held the position of Head of Department. She holds the SARChI Chair in Artificial Intelligence for Sustainable Development and the Multichoice Joint Chair in Machine learning. She is currently Chair of the IEEE CIS Women in Computational Intelligence subcommittee, Chair of the IEEE CIS Mentoring Program subcommittee, Chair of the IEEE CIS Outstanding PhD Dissertation Award, Vice Chair of the IEEE Evolutionary Computation Technical Committee, IEEE CIS Society Coordinator on IEEE WIE, IEEE CIS Liaison to the IEEE TAB CDI, member of the IEEE CIS Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Subcommittee, member of the IEEE CIS Strategic Subcommittee, member of the IEEE CIS Ad­Hoc committee for the STEM Education, member of the IEEE CIS IEEE CIS Core Values Working Group, member of the IEEE CIS Students and Young Professionals Subcommittee and member of IEEE of the CIM and TETCI Outstanding Paper Award (OPA) subcommittees. She is an Associate Editor for IEEE CIM and IEEE TETCI and Technical Co-Chair for IEEE WCCI 2024. She has previously served as Chair of the IEEE Intelligent Systems Applications Technical Committee, co­lead of the IEEE CEC 2022 Mentoring Programming, member of IEEE CIS Outstanding Phd Dissertation Award, IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine Ad­Hoc Plagiarism Committee, member of the steering committee of IEEE Transactions on Machine Learning in Communications and Networking (TMLCN), mentor for the IEEE CIS Mentoring Program, Publications Co-chair for IEEE WCCI 2022. 

Position Statement:

Lifelong Learning and Up-skilling- As we move from one industrial revolution to the next new skills are needed and some skills become redundant in our society. As such  a culture of lifelong learning needs to be cultivated, e.g., providing resources/platforms for members to easily up-skill.

CIS Community Projects- Using CIS to solve problems in communities in need to improve quality of life. Each project can be aimed at working with a particular community and making a difference in the community. This will also provide a platform for bringing together academia and industry stakeholders to provide the necessary support.

CIS Extended Mentoring Program- Currently CIS has an effective mentoring program that is helping PhD students and early career researchers. However, support is needed at different levels of careers, in both academia and industry, as well as different roles within the CIS society itself, e.g., mentoring for volunteers.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in CIS- While CIS is definitely one of the most active societies in promoting diversity, equity and inclusion and is making a difference, there is still room for growth. Mechanisms to further bridge the gap needs to be identified.

Dongrui Wu (IEEE Fellow) received a B.E in Automatic Control from the University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China, in 2003, an M.Eng in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National University of Singapore in 2006, and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, in 2009. He is now Professor and Deputy Director of the Key Laboratory of the Ministry of Education for Image Processing and Intelligent Control, School of Artificial Intelligence and Automation, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.

Prof. Wu's research interests include brain-computer interface, machine learning, computational intelligence, and affective computing. He has more than 200 publications (11000+ Google Scholar citations; h=54). He received the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) Outstanding PhD Dissertation Award in 2012, the IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems Outstanding Paper Award in 2014, the IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics (SMC) Society Early Career Award in 2017, the USERN Prize in Formal Sciences in 2020, the IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering Best Paper Award in 2021, the Chinese Association of Automation Early Career Award in 2021, and the Ministry of Education Young Scientist Award in 2022. His team won the First Prize of the China Brain-Computer Interface Competition in four successive years (2019-2022).

Prof. Wu has been a member of the IEEE CIS for 18 years, and had extensive volunteering experience. He is now the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE TFS (2023-), and a member of the CIS Publications Committee. He was an Associate Editor of the IEEE TFS (2011-2018; 2020-2021) and IEEE CI Magazine (2017-2022). He has organized 10+ special sessions in WCCI and FUZZ-IEEE conferences, and published 100+ articles in CIS journals and conferences. He was Chair of the IEEE CIS Wuhan Chapter (2020-2022).

He has also been playing leadership roles in closely-related societies. He was on the Board of Governors of the IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics (SMC) Society in 2022, and its Associate Vice President for Human-Machine Systems in 2021-2022. He was the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE SMC Society eNewsLetter in 2021-2022.

Position Statement:

If elected, I will continue supporting CIS educational and technical activities to extend our reach in the scientific community, and also promoting real-world and industrial applications of computational intelligence technologies. As always, I will actively support and participate in the CIS annual conferences by submitting papers, organizing special sessions/panel sessions/ tutorials. I will also facilitate the communications among closely-related societies (e.g., IEEE SMCS), by organizing special issues on computational intelligence topics in their flagship journals and special sessions in their annual conferences, and vice versa.

Alessandro Sperduti (M’98-SM’08-AF’09-M’13) received the degree in computer science cum laude in 1988 and the PhD in 1993 from University of Pisa, Italy. He is a Full Professor at the Department of Mathematics of the University of Padova since March 1, 2002. Previously, he has been associate professor (1998-2002) and assistant professor (1995-1998) at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Pisa.

His research interests are mainly in Neural Networks, Kernel Methods, and Process Mining.

Prof. Sperduti has been General co-chair of IEEE WCCI 2022, Area Chair/PC member of several conferences (such as IJCNN, NeurIPS, ICLR, IJCAI, ECAI, ICML, ECML) and guest editor of special issues for the journals Neural Networks, IEEE TKDE, and Cognitive Systems Research. He has been associate editor (2009-2012) for the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, and other journals, such as Neural Networks. He is currently Action Editor for the Transactions on Machine Learning Research (open access). Starting from 2001 till 2010, he has been member of the European Neural Networks Society (ENNS) Executive Committee, chair of the DMTC of IEEE CIS for the years 2009 and 2010, chair of the NNTC for the years 2011 and 2012, chair of the IEEE CIS Student Games-Based Competition Committee for the years 2013 and 2014, Chair of the Continuous Education Committee of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society for year 2015, and member of the IEEE Frank Rosenblatt Award Committee (2014-2015). He is senior member IEEE. He has delivered several tutorials in main Artificial Intelligence conferences (WCCI 2018 and 2012, IJCAI 2001, IJCAI 1999, IJCAI 1997) and summer schools (e.g., International Summer School on Deep Learning 2017, International Summer School on Deep Learning On-chip 2017). He was the recipient of the 2000 AI*IA (Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence) “MARCO SOMALVICO” Young Researcher Award. He has been invited plenary speaker for the conferences ICANN 2021 and 2001, WSOM 2007, CIDM 2013. 

Prof. Sperduti is the author of more than 250 publications on refereed journals, conferences, and chapters in books.

Position Statement:

We are witnessing an extraordinary explosion of interest in Intelligent Systems, with enormous focus on Deep Learning. There is no doubt that the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society is at the forefront in contributing to the development of amazing technologies for the advancement of human wellness.

We members of this Society have the responsibility to contribute at our best to the growth of our community, making good use of the experience collected by senior members and the enthusiasm and novelty that junior members can contribute with.

Integration is the word I like the most. Applied to all fields. I think our society has nowadays the opportunity to augment even more its impact in the world by reaching a higher integration of its scientific components, people, and services. We should also increase the integration with industry and sister societies, being careful in not losing our identity.

I will work to increase the impact of our society both in the scientific and industrial areas, to improve services to CIS members, and to foster members diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Marley Vellasco is a Full Professor and Vice-Rector at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). Marley holds a degree in Electrical Engineering/Electronics from PUC-Rio (1984), a Master's in Electrical Engineering from PUC-Rio (1987) and a PhD in Computer Science from University College London (UCL) (1992). She is a member of the Editorial Board of the main IEEE Computational Intelligence Society journals, such as IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence and IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems. She is also an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics and Neural Networks. She has volunteered in various CIS committees and has been the IEEE CIS Vice-President for Conferences since 2020. She is also the Secretary of the International Neural Network Society. She has also been involved in the organizing committee of many CIS flagship conferences. She has published over 90 papers in specialized journals and more than 400 in conference proceedings. She also published 19 book chapters and 5 scientific books. Dr Vellasco has also published 19 book chapters and five scientific books. She supervised more than 90 master's dissertations and 40 doctoral theses. She has experience in the areas of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, with an emphasis on Computational Intelligence, working mainly on the following topics: neural networks, fuzzy logic and evolutionary computing, focusing on the development of intelligent hybrid systems for AutoML (Automatic Machine Learning), such as neuro-evolutionary, fuzzy-evolutionary models and neural architecture search (NAS).

Position Statement:

As a member of the Computational Intelligence Society Administrative Committee, I will work to increase the number of members and promote active participation of Latin American researchers in machine learning and computational intelligence. I will also work to promote the quality of CIS flagship conferences, helping to improve their ranking in the main ranking organizations. I also want to help increase the number of members and contribute to the management of the Society. I will encourage more females in the area of computational intelligence to be members of IEEE CIS. As a Full Professor of the Electrical Engineering Department of the Pontifical Catholica University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), which receives graduate students from all over Latin America, I will also promote the benefits of joining CIS to undergraduate and postgraduate students.  My main focus will be to help CIS to be recognized as the key Society in Artificial Intelligence.