Special Session Organisers 

Dr Fanlin Meng, Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, UK

Prof Dunwei Gong, School of Information Science and Technology, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, China

Prof Xiao-Jun Zeng, Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester, UK

Dr Fanlin Meng received his PhD from University of Manchester, UK in 2015 where he is currently a Lecturer in Data Science. His primary research interests include Machine Learning, Game theory and Optimisation including their applications to smart grids and energy markets, intelligent transportation systems, and sustainability. He has published more than 40 international journal and conference papers in the above research areas. He was PC/TPC/session chair of more than 10 international conferences including AAAI, IJCAI, IJCNN, WCCI. He is Fellow of British Computer Society (FBCS) and Senior Member of IEEE.

Prof Dunwei Gong received the B.Sc. degree in mathematics from China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou, China, in 1992, the M.Sc. degree in control theory and applications from Beihang University, Beijing, China, in 1995, and the Ph.D. degree in control theory and control engineering from China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou, China, in 1999, respectively. He is an IEEE senior member, a Professor in Computational Intelligence, and the Director of the Centre for Intelligent Software and Systems, School of Information Science and Technology, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, China. He published over 200 publications, and obtained four awards issued by Ministry of Education, Shandong and Jiangsu Province, China, respectively, in recent years. His current research interests include computation intelligence in multi/many-objective optimization, dynamic and uncertain optimization, as well as applications in integrated energy systems, software engineering, IC circuits, scheduling, path planning, big data processing and analysis.

Prof. Xiaojun Zeng has been with the Department of Computer Science at the University of Manchester since 2002, where he is currently a Professor of Machine Learning. Before joining the University of Manchester in 2002, he was with Knowledge Support Systems, Ltd. between 1996- 2002, where he was the Head of Research, developing intelligent pricing decision support systems. His research in intelligent pricing decision support systems was selected by UKCRC, CPHC, and BCS Academy as one of 20 impact cases to highlight the impact made by UK academic Computer Science Research within the UK and worldwide over the period 2008 – 2013. Prof. Zeng’s research interests include Computational Intelligence, Machine Learning, Decision Support Systems, Energy Systems and Markets. He is an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems.