Speakers

 Carlos Hernández holds MSc and PhD degrees from CINVESTAV-IPN, Mexico. He held a postdoctoral position at the University of Oxford, UK, where he worked on optimizing driving strategies for autonomous vehicles under uncertainty. He is currently an Associate Researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where he coordinates the Data Science undergraduate program and leads OptiMO, a research group focused on optimization under uncertainty, with multi-objective reinforcement learning as one of its main research lines. His work connects optimization theory to real-world problems with social impact and has been recognized by the Google Academic Research Award 2024 for a project using AI to support community-led approaches to urban sustainability and the AFIRME-FUNAM Award 2026 for research on adaptive and fair credit policies for financial inclusion. This year, Carlos is Co-Track Chair of the EMO track at GECCO. 

Daniel E Hernandez is a professor at the Tecnológico Nacional de México/ IT de Tijuana, in Tijuana, BC, Mexico. He holds a B.Eng. in Computer Engineering from Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science the from Centro de Investigación Científica y de Educación Superior de Ensenada, Baja California, (CICESE), in Mexico. His research interests include several data science and artificial intelligence topics such as: machine learning, feature engineering, evolutionary computation and computer vision. In addition to his academic research, Dr. Hernandez has developed and participated in several research and technological development projects with private companies and public institutions, applying artificial intelligence and machine learning methods to real-world problems in areas such as intelligent data analysis, computer vision, pattern recognition, and applied computational modeling. 

Esteban Meneses, PhD, is the Director of CNCA and can be reached via email at emeneses@cenat.ac.cr. He holds an extensive academic background, including a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a Master's degree in Bioinformatics from the same university, a Master's degree in Computer Science from the Costa Rica Institute of Technology, and a Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering from the Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica. His main research interests are high-performance computing, fault tolerance, and computational seismology.