Dr. Swagatam Das, ISI Kolkata, India
Title of the Talk: Multi-modal and Non-stationary Optimization with Differential Evolution: Some Recent Approaches and Applications

Swagatam Das is currently serving as an Associate Professor at the Electronics and Communication Sciences Unit of the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India. His research interests include evolutionary computing, pattern recognition, multi-agent systems, and wireless communication. Dr. Das has published one research monograph, one edited volume, and more than 200 research articles in peer-reviewed journals and international conferences. He is the founding co-editor-in-chief of Swarm and Evolutionary Computation, an international journal from Elsevier. He has also served as or is serving as the associate editors of the IEEE Trans. on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems, IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine, IEEE Access, Pattern Recognition (Elsevier), Neurocomputing (Elsevier), Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence (Elsevier), and Information Sciences (Elsevier). He is an editorial board member of Progress in Artificial Intelligence (Springer), PeerJ Computer Science, International Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, and International Journal of Adaptive and Autonomous Communication Systems. Dr. Das has 14000+ Google Scholar citations and an H-index of 56 till date. He has been associated with the international program committees and organizing committees of several regular international conferences including IEEE CEC, IEEE SSCI, SEAL, GECCO, and SEMCCO. He has acted as guest editors for special issues in journals like IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation and IEEE Transactions on SMC, Part C. He is the recipient of the 2012 Young Engineer Award from the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE). He is also the recipient of the 2015 Thomson Reuters Research Excellence India Citation Award as the highest cited researcher from India in Engineering and Computer Science category between 2010 to 2014.

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

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.

Dr. Hossain Zolfagharinia, Ryerson University Canada

Dr. Hossein Zolfagharinia is an award-wining Assistant Professor of Operations Management in the Global Management Studies department at the Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University. He received his Undergraduate and Master's Degrees in Industrial Engineering. Following this, he earned his Ph.D. in Operations and Supply Chain Management from the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics at Wilfrid Laurier University. In addition to his academic background, he has more than four years of professional work experience as a business method analyst in the oil and drilling industry. Furthermore, he gained experience in the area of Supply Chain Management through managing several projects in trucking and maritime transportation companies in the past (e.g., Logikor Inc., Global Spatial Technology Solutions (GSTS) Inc.).

Dr. Zolfagharinia’s two main research interests are in: (1) investigating the benefits of collaboration in supply chain management with a focus on logistics and transportation, (2) applying operations management techniques in a healthcare context. He is the author of a book chapter and several top-tier refereed journal articles. These journals include: European Journal of Operational Research, Transportation Research: Part B and Part E, International Journal of Production Economics, and Operations Research for Health Care. He frequently presents his work at scholarly/professional conferences at both the national and international levels (e.g., Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS), Annual meeting of Canadian Operational Research Society (CORS), and Decision Sciences Institute (DSI)).

He is the recipient of the 2017-2018 Dean's Scholarly, Research and Creative Activity Award. He has received over $250,000 in the form of research grants, scholarships, and fellowships. These include Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council-Institutional Grant (SSHRC-SIG), Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE), Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS), the Best OGS Research Proposal, and the Ontario Institute of the Purchasing Management Association of Canada (OIPMAC) Achievement Excellence, and the provisional winner of Supply Chain & Logistics Association of Canada Paper Competition.