KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Prof. Witold Pedrycz (IEEE Fellow)
University of Alberta, Canada

Witold Pedrycz (IEEE Fellow, 1998) is Professor and Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Computational Intelligence in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. He is also with the Systems Research Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland. In 2009 Dr. Pedrycz was elected a foreign member of the Polish Academy of Sciences. In 2012 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2007 he received a prestigious Norbert Wiener award from the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society. He is a recipient of the IEEE Canada Computer Engineering Medal, a Cajastur Prize for Soft Computing from the European Centre for Soft Computing, a Killam Prize, a Fuzzy Pioneer Award from the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, and 2019 Meritorious Service Award from the IEEE Systems Man and Cybernetics Society. His main research directions involve Computational Intelligence, fuzzy modeling and Granular Computing, knowledge discovery and data science, pattern recognition, data science, knowledge-based neural networks, and control engineering. He has published papers in these areas. He is also an author of 21 research monographs and edited volumes covering various aspects of Computational Intelligence, data mining, and Software Engineering. Dr. Pedrycz is vigorously involved in editorial activities. He is an Editor-in-Chief of Information Sciences, Editor-in-Chief of WIREs Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery (Wiley), and Co-editor-in-Chief of Int. J. of Granular Computing (Springer) and J. of Data Information and Management (Springer).  He serves on an Advisory Board of IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems and is a member of a number of editorial boards of international journals.

Keynote Speaker II

Prof. Xudong Jiang (IEEE Fellow)
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Dr. Xudong Jiang received the B.Eng. and M.Eng. from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), and the Ph.D. degree from Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg, Germany. From 1986 to 1993, he was a Lecturer with UESTC, where he received two Science and Technology Awards from the Ministry for Electronic Industry of China. From 1998 to 2004, he was with the Institute for Infocomm Research, A-Star, Singapore, as a Lead Scientist and the Head of the Biometrics Laboratory, where he developed a system that achieved the most efficiency and the second most accuracy at the International Fingerprint Verification Competition in 2000. He joined Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, as a Faculty Member, in 2004, and served as the Director of the Centre for Information Security from 2005 to 2011. Currently, he is a professor in NTU. Dr Jiang holds 7 patents and has authored over 150 papers with over 40 papers in the IEEE journals, including 11 papers in IEEE T-IP and 6 papers in IEEE T-PAMI. Three of his papers have been listed as the top 1% highly cited papers in the academic field of Engineering by Essential Science Indicators. He served as IFS TC Member of the IEEE Signal Processing Society from 2015 to 2017, Associate Editor for IEEE SPL from 2014 to 2018, Associate Editor for IEEE T-IP from 2016 to 2020 and the founding editorial board member for IET Biometrics form 2012 to 2019. Dr Jiang is currently an IEEE Fellow and serves as Senior Area Editor for IEEE T-IP and Editor-in-Chief for IET Biometrics. His current research interests include image processing, pattern recognition, computer vision, machine learning, and biometrics.

Keynote Speaker III

Prof. Sunil Vadera (BCS Fellow)
University of Salford, UK

Sunil Vadera is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Salford. He is a Fellow of the British Computer Society, a Chartered Engineer (CEng) and Chartered IT Professional (CITP). He has held many leadership roles including as Dean of the School of Computing, Science and Engineering, Head of Computer Science, Associate Dean of Research, and Director of Informatics Research Institute. He was Chair and Vice Chair of British Computer Society (BCS) Accreditations Committee from 2007 to 2010 which has responsibility for accreditation of the UK degrees in Computing. Sunil was awarded the UK BDO best Indian Scientist and Engineer in 2014 and the Amity Research Award for AI & Neural Networks in 2018.  Sunil gained a first class BSc(Hons) in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Salford in 1982, receiving three best student prizes. He holds a PhD from the University of Manchester in the area of Formal Methods of Software Development which was awarded in 1992. Following graduation, he began his career as a Research Assistant and progressed to a Lectureship in Computer Science in 1984. He was promoted to a Senior Lecturer in 1997 and to a Chair in Computer Science in 2000. Sunil has served as an external examiner for several institutions including Loughborough University, Liverpool University, Leeds Metropolitan University, Northumbria University, London Southbank University and Middlesex University. He has also carried out reviews of Computer Science departments in Universities in Jordan, Algeria, China, India and Sri Lanka.