作者: K. Balachandran

Dr. Mukesh Saraswat is an Associate Professor at Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, Noida, India. Dr. Saraswat has obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science & Engineering from ABV-IIITM Gwalior, India. He has more than 18 years of teaching and research experience. He has guided 02 Ph D students, more than 50 M. Tech. and B.Tech. dissertations, and presently guiding 04 Ph.D. students. He has published more than 50 journal and conference papers in the area of image processing, pattern recognition, data mining, and soft computing. He was the part of successfully completed DRDE funded project on image analysis and SERB-DST (New Delhi) funded project on Histopathological Image Analysis. He is currently running a projects funded by and Collaborative Research Scheme (CRS), Under TEQIP III (RTU-ATU) on Smile. He has been an active member of many organizing committees of various conferences and workshops. He is also a guest editor of the Array, journal of Swarm Intelligence, and Journal of Intelligent Engineering Informatics. He is an active member of IEEE, ACM, CSI Professional Bodies. His research areas include Image Processing, Pattern Recognition, Mining, and Soft Computing.  Dr. Harish Sharma is an Associate professor at Rajasthan Technical University, Kota in Department of Computer Science & Engineering. He has worked at Vardhaman Mahaveer Open University Kota, and Government Engineering College Jhalawar. He received his B.Tech and M.Tech degree in Computer Engg. from Govt. Engineering College, Kota and Rajasthan Technical University, Kota in 2003 and 2009 respectively. He obtained his Ph.D. from ABV – Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Gwalior, India. He is secretary and one of the founder member of Soft Computing Research Society of India. He is a life time member of Cryptology Research Society of India, ISI, Kolkata. He is an Associate Editor of “International Journal of Swarm Intelligence (IJSI)” publishedby Inderscience. He has also edited special issues of the many reputed journals like “Memetic Computing”, “Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence”, “Evolutionary Intelligence” etc. His primary area of interest is nature inspired optimization techniques. He has contributed in more than 105 papers published in various international journals and conferences.  Dr. Balachandran K. is currently a Professor and Head CSE at CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru, India. He has total 38 years’ experience in Research, Academia and Industry. He Served as Senior Scientific Officer in the Research and Development unit of Department of Atomic Energy for 20 years. His research interest includes Data Mining, Artificial Neural Networks, Soft computing, Artificial Intelligence. He has published more than fifty articles in well-known SCI/SCOPUS indexed international journals and conferences, and attended several national and international conferences andworkshops. He has authored/edited four books in the area of computer science.  Professor Joong Hoon Kim, a faculty of Korea University in the School of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering, obtained his Ph.D. degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1992 with the thesis title “Optimal replacement/rehabilitation model for water distribution systems”.  Prof. Kim’s major areas of interest include: optimal design and management of water distribution systems, application of optimization techniques to various engineering problems, and development and application of evolutionary algorithms. His publication includes “A New Heuristic Optimization Algorithm: Harmony Search”, Simulation, February 2001, Vol. 76, pp 60-68, which has been cited over 2, 300 times by other journals of diverse research areas.  His keynote speeches include “Optimization Algorithms as Tools for Hydrological Science” in the Annual Meeting of Asia Oceania Geosciences Society held in Brisbane, Australia in June of 2013, “Recent Advances in Harmony Search Algorithm” in the 4th Global Congress on Intelligent Systems (GCIS 2013) held in Hong Kong, China in December of 2013, and “Improving the convergence of Harmony Search Algorithm and its variants” in the 4th International Conference on Soft Computing For Problem Solving (SOCPROS 2014) held in Silcha, India in December of 2014.  He hosted the 6th Conference of The Asia Pacific Association of Hydrology and Water Resources (APHW 2013) and the 2nd International Conference on Harmony Search Algorithm (ICHSA 2015). And he is hosting another one, the 12th International Conference on Hydroinformatics (HIC 2016) in August of 2016.  Dr. Jagdish Chand Bansal is an Associate Professor at South Asian University New Delhi and Visiting Faculty at Maths and Computer Science, Liverpool Hope University UK. Dr. Bansal has obtained his Ph.D. in Mathematics from IIT Roorkee. Before joining SAU New Delhi he has worked as an Assistant Professor at ABV- Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management Gwalior and BITS Pilani. His Primary area of interest is Swarm Intelligence and Nature Inspired Optimization Techniques. Recently, he proposed a fission-fusion social structure based optimization algorithm, Spider Monkey Optimization (SMO), which is being applied to various problems from the engineering domain. He has published more than 70 research papers in various international journals/conferences. He has worked with the Liverpool Hope University UK for various research projects. He is the editor in chief of the journal Methods X published by Elsevier. He is the series editor of the book series Algorithms for Intelligent Systems (AIS) and Studies in Autonomic, Data-driven and Industrial Computing (SADIC) published by Springer. He is the editor in chief of International Journal of Swarm Intelligence (IJSI) published by Inderscience. He is also the Associate Editor of IEEE ACCESS published by IEEE and ARRAY published by Elsevier. He is the general secretary of the Soft Computing Research Society (SCRS). He has also received Gold Medal at UG and PG level.