Prof. Xizheng Zhang
Hunan University of Humanities, China
Zhang Xizheng, male, Han nationality, born in 1979 in Xishui, Hubei Province, is a member of the Communist Party of China (CPC), holding a Doctor of Engineering degree, a Professor, and a Doctoral Supervisor. He currently serves as Member of the Party Committee and Vice President of Hunan University of Humanities, Science and Technology. He is a Distinguished Professor of Hunan Provincial Furong Program, a Second-level Candidate of Hunan Provincial 121 Innovation Talent Project, and has been included in the Top 2% Scientists Worldwide List. He also holds the positions of Director of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) Characteristic Industry-Education Integration Center for Cybersecurity, Dean of Hunan Provincial Modern Industry College of Artificial Intelligence, Director of Hunan Provincial Engineering Technology Research Center for "Mining Transportation Equipment and Intelligent Systems", and Director of Hunan Provincial Engineering Research Center for "Intelligent Logistics and Unmanned Driving Technology". With long-term research focus on artificial intelligence technology and its applications, vehicle intelligentization technology, and other related fields, he has presided over more than 15 national and provincial-level projects, including those funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), Key Projects of Scientific Research of the Ministry of Education, and Provincial Key Research and Development Programs. He has published over 100 papers in high-level journals at home and abroad (including 4 ESI Highly Cited Papers and Hot Papers) and holds more than 20 authorized invention patents.
His research achievements have won 7 provincial and ministerial-level scientific research awards, such as the Second Prize of Science and Technology Progress in Institutions of Higher Education of the Ministry of Education, the Second Prize of Hunan Provincial Natural Science, and the Second Prize of Invention and Entrepreneurship of China Invention Association.
Prof. Pietro S. Oliveto
Southern University of Science and Technology, China
Pietro Oliveto is a Professor of Computer Science at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) Shenzhen, China. He received the Laurea degree and PhD degree in computer science respectively from the University of Catania, Italy in 2005 and from the University of Birmingham, UK in 2009. He has been EPSRC PhD+ Fellow (2009-2010) and EPSRC Postdoctoral Fellow (2010-2013) at the University of Birmingham, UK and Vice-Chancellor's Fellow (2013-2016) and EPSRC Early Career Fellow (2015-2020) at the University of Sheffield, UK. Before moving to SUSTech he was Chair in Algorithms at the Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield, UK.
His main research interest is the performance analysis, in particular the time complexity, of bio-inspired computation techniques including evolutionary algorithms, genetic programming, artificial immune systems, hyper-heuristics and algorithm configurators. He is currently building a Theory of Artificial Intelligence Lab at SUSTech. He has guest-edited journal special issues of Computer Science and Technology, Evolutionary Computation, Theoretical Computer Science, IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation and Algorithmica. He has co-Chaired the IEEE symposium on Foundations of Computational Intelligence (FOCI) from 2015 to 2021 and has been co-program Chair of the ACM Conference on Foundations of Genetic Algorithms (FOGA 2021) and Theory Track co-chair at GECCO 2022, GECCO 2023 and GECCO 2026. He is part of the Steering Committee of the annual workshop on Theory of Randomized Search Heuristics (ThRaSH), was Leader of the Benchmarking Working Group of the EU-COST Action ImAppNIO, was member of the EPSRC Peer Review College and recently completed his term as Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation.
Prof. Buqing Cao
Hunan University of Technology, China
Buqing Cao, Dean of the School of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. He holds a Ph.D., is a Professor, and a Ph.D. Supervisor. He is also a Furong Scholar of Hunan Province. His primary research interests include service computing and edge computing, machine learning and recommender systems, large AI models and agents, and intelligent software and services. In recent years, he has published over one hundred papers in prestigious domestic and international academic journals such as IEEE TSC, IEEE TITS, Chinese Journal of Computers, Journal of Software, as well as at top-tier international conferences like AAAI and ICWS. Among these publications, over 50 are in Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Zone 1 journals, CCF A-class journals/conferences, and IEEE Transactions series journals. His work has been recognized with 7 Best Paper Awards / Best Student Paper Awards at various international and domestic academic conferences. He has led the completion of 3 national-level projects and over 10 provincial/ministerial-level and other projects. Currently, he is leading one ongoing National Natural Science Foundation of China project and 3 provincial/ministerial-level as well as industry collaboration projects. He currently serves as a Distinguished Member of the China Computer Federation (CCF), a Standing Committee Member of the CCF Technical Committee on Service Computing, and a Committee Member of the CCF Technical Committee on Collaborative Computing. He also holds positions such as Standing Council Member of the Hunan Computer Federation / Hunan Society of Internet of Things / Hunan Computer Education Committee, Member of the Hunan Provincial University Computer Teaching Advisory Committee, and Expert of the Hunan Provincial Working Group for the Computer Science "101 Plan".
Prof. Chauhdary Sajjad Hussain
Huzhou University, China
Dr. Sajjad Hussain Chauhdary is a professor at the School of Information Engineering, Huzhou University, China. His appointment to this role followed his tenure as an associate professor at the College of Computer Science and Engineering (CCSE), University of Jeddah, from 2016 to 2024. Prior to his academic career, Dr. Chauhdary spent five years as a senior research engineer at LG/LSIS Co., Ltd., Advanced Technology R&D Center. During this period, his innovative work was recognized with the "Best Research Award" (2012) and the "Best Project Award" (2014), and he led numerous impactful industrial and academic research projects funded by various governmental and cooperative organizations. Dr. Chauhdary has also been actively engaged in standardization efforts, contributing his expertise to major organizations such as SAE International (standard J2831/1-5), ZigBee Alliance (SEP 2.0), and ISO/IEC (15118).
Assoc. Prof. Pushpendu Kar
University of Nottingham, UK
Dr. Pushpendu Kar is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science at the University of Nottingham, UK (China campus), where he has also served as an Assistant Professor since 2019. Before this, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), the National University of Singapore (NUS), and Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. He also worked in different engineering colleges as a lecturer and in the IT industry as a software professional. He has over 14 years of experience in teaching and research, as well as 1.5 years of industrial experience at IBM. He has completed all his PhD, Master of Engineering, and Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering. He also completed a Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education (PGCHE) in 2023. He received the prestigious Erasmus Mundus Postdoctoral Fellowship from the European Commission, the ERCIM Alain Bensoussan Fellowship from the European Union, and the SERB OPD Fellowship from the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. He has received the 2020 IEEE Systems Journal Best Paper Award. He has received six research grants to support research-based projects, three of which were as a Principal Investigator (PI). He also received many travel grants to attend conferences and doctoral colloquiums. He is the author of over 70 scholarly research papers that have appeared in prestigious journals, conferences, book chapters, and IT magazines. He has also published one authored and three edited books. He holds nine patents. He has organized the ICIoT2024 and ICDSEC2025 conferences with a team. He has also chaired numerous conference committees, collaborated with a team to organize short-term courses, and delivered a few Keynote and Invited talks at international conferences and institutions. He has also served on the editorial boards of several international journals. He is a Senior Member of IEEE, a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA), UK, a Fellow of the Institution of Electronics & Telecommunication Engineers (FIETE), India, and a Chartered Engineer (CEng) from the Engineering Council, UK. The Ningbo Municipal Government in China has recognised him as a High-Level Talent. Dr. Kar mainly teaches Computer Networks and programming-related modules. His research areas include Ad Hoc Networks, Wireless Sensor Networks, Internet of Things, Content-Centric Networking, Blockchain, BigData, and Quantum Communication.