Please contact conference Chair, Chihan H. Dagli (dagli@mst.edu), if you would like to sponsor a track, or be a part of the organizing committee.

Dr. Dagli is a Professor of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management and also a Professor Computer and Electrical Engineering. He is the founder of Missouri S&T 's Systems Engineering Graduate Program. Dr. Dagli  is also the Intelligent Systems Design  Area Editor for the International Journal of General Systems and the director of the Smart Engineering Systems Lab (SESL) at the Missouri S&T.  He is  Senior Investigator in DoD Systems Engineering Research Center-URAC. Dr. Dagli is a fellow of International Council of Systems Engineering INCOSE 2008 and Institute of Industrial Engineers IIE 2009.  He received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Industrial Engineering from the Middle East Technical University  and a Ph.D. Applied Operations Research in Large Scale Systems Design and Operation from the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, where from 1976 to 1979 he was a British Council Fellow.
(In alphabetical order)

Nil Ergin is Assistant Professor of Systems Engineering at Penn State University’s School of Graduate Professional Studies. Prior to joining Penn State University, she worked as a Research Assistant Professor within the Research Institute for Manufacturing and Engineering Systems (RIMES) at the University of Texas at El Paso where she taught for the systems engineering graduate program and served on industry funded research contracts. She was also a Postdoctoral Fellow at Missouri University of Science & Technology. Nil Ergin received her Ph.D. in Systems Engineering and M.S. in Engineering Management from the Missouri University of Science & Technology. She also holds a B.S. degree in Environmental Engineering from Istanbul Technical University, Turkey. Her research interests include model-based systems engineering, system of systems engineering, complex adaptive systems, and multi-agent systems. She is also a researcher at the DoD-Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC), a federally funded University Affiliated Research Center. She is a member of INCOSE (International Council on Systems Engineering).

Fred Highland is an adjunct instructor in the Systems Engineering program at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He has over 38 years of experience in software and systems technology with Lockheed Martin where he was a Senior Fellow and Master Systems Architect responsible for architecture and development of complex systems including the NASA Space Shuttle, Census data collection systems, artificial intelligence applications and big data analytics.

His research interests include application of complex systems to systems engineering and architecture as well as neurocomputing using polychronous wavefront computing. Mr. Highland received his M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Houston and a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Rhode Island.

Nevrez Imamoglu, Ph.D., is working at Artificial Intelligence Research Center, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tokyo, Japan since April, 2016. Before joining AIST, he joined RIKEN Brain Science Institute as a Research Scientist and JSPS Foreign Postdoctoral Fellow. He also worked as Research Associate at School of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He received his Ph.D. from Department of Medical Systems Engineering, Chiba University. He obtained his M.S. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Ankara, Turkey. He also holds double major B.S. Degrees in Computer Engineering and Electronics & Communication Engineering, Cankaya University, Ankara, Turkey. His research interests include computer vision, signal/image processing, pattern recognition, assisting technologies, intelligent systems.

Walker Haden Land, Jr. is a Research Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at Binghamton University. Land joined the faculty at Binghamton after a long career at IBM, and has publications in the fields of complex adaptive systems, statistical learning theory, bioinformatics, and cancer research.

Land worked at IBM for 27 years after being honorably discharged from the United States Air Force. He was responsible for research and development in statistical and stochastic processes, Bayesian inference, artificial intelligence, expert systems, coherent processing, neural networks, and guidance and location systems. Land also participated in development and evaluation of guidance systems for the Saturn and Apollo vehicles, as well as worked with post-Apollo space configurations, including the Space Shuttle. He made calculations for the original Apollo mission to circle the moon and come back to Earth. The initial conditions in his calculation included the then-nine planets as well as all of their then-known moons.

With his background in creating code and years of work at companies like IBM, Land was instrumental in perfecting the weights and bias for codes that are capable of solving complex adaptive systems.

Laks Meyyappan, Ph.D is currently working as an Enterprise Analytics Manager at Caterpillar, Inc. He has 15+ years of industry and research experience in the field of advanced data analytics. He has been working for Caterpillar a little over 11 years and has a global experience working for Caterpillar in U.S.A, U.K, and India. He is a strategic thought leader who has progressively grown and successfully worked in the roles of strategy development & implementation, people management, program/portfolio management,  off-shore data analysis team development, 6 Sigma Black Belt, project management, systems engineer, software architect and developer. Prior to joining Caterpillar, he worked as a Post Doctoral Fellow at Missouri S&T with focus on Artificial Intelligence. He graduated with Ph.D in Engineering Management & Systems Engineering (dissertation in Agent-Based Systems) and a Master's in Computer Engineering from Missouri S&T. 

Iveta Mrázová, PhD is Associate Professor and Head of Department of Theoretical Computer Science and Mathematical Logic at Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. She graduated from F. Schiller University in Jena, Germany in 1989 and received her Ph.D. from the Institute of Computer Science of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague in 1997. During 2002-2003, she was a Fulbright fellow at Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, USA. Her research interests include artificial intelligence, machine learning and data mining. She published more than 50 research papers focused mainly on artificial neural networks, data mining and knowledge extraction.

Michael Nance is the CISO and Cyber CTO for the Lockheed Martin Information Systems & Global Solutions (IS&GS) Civil Product line group. Mr. Nance was appointed to this position in November 2008.  Mr. Nance also serves as the principal investigator and leader in the research and creation of advanced Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) and Adaption Sciences for the entire corporation. 

Mr. Nance joined Lockheed Martin in 2003; prior to his current Senior Fellow position, Mr. Nance oversaw engineering teams in the classified design, implementation, and testing of trusted ground, airborne, and space-based systems. He has over three decades of experience in information technologies, and is an expert in computer network infrastructure and cyber space operations.  Before joining Lockheed Martin, Mr. Nance was Vice President of Information Security in the banking sector.  He also helped in the creation of NTech Group, an engineering consulting practice where he held the position of Chief Technology Officer.  Mr. Nance’s government experience includes 14 years with the United States Air Force, working in telecommunications and cryptographic systems. 

Mr. Nance is a Certified Information System Security Professional (CISSP) and an Information Systems Security Management and Architecture Professional (ISSMP / ISSAP).  He received a Masters in Information Systems and a B.S. in Information Technology from the University of Phoenix.  He is currently working on his Doctorate of Science (DSc) in Information Assurance from Capitol College. He is active in the information technology community, including with the InfraGard organization and various related councils. 

Ahmet Murat Ozbayoglu graduated from the Department of Electrical Engineering at Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey in 1991 with an emphasis on telecommunications and computers. Then he continued his education as a graduate student in Missouri University of Science and Technology (formerly knwon as University of Missouri-Rolla (UMR)) in Engineering Management. He obtained his Msc and PhD degrees from UMR in 1993 and 1996, respectively. After graduation, he joined Beyond Inc, St. Peters, MO as a product development engineer and consultant. In 2001 he joined MEMC Electronic Materials Inc., St. Peters, MO as a software project engineer, programmer and analyst . During his work in Beyond Inc. and MEMC, he worked on software data automation projects for silicon wafer manufacturing systems. In 2005, he went back to academia by joining the Department of Computer Engineering of TOBB University of Economics and Technology,  in Ankara, Turkey. His research interests are machine learning, pattern recognition, image processing, computational intelligence, machine vision.

Prof. Mika Sato-Ilic currently holds the position of Professor in the Faculty of Engineering, Information and Systems, at the University of Tsukuba, Japan. She is the founding editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Knowledge Engineering and Soft Data Paradigms, Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, Associate Editor of Neurocomputing, Associate Editor of Information Sciences, Regional Editor of International Journal on Intelligent Decision Technologies and Associate Editor of the International Journal of Innovative Computing, Information and Control Express Letters, as well as serving on the editorial board of several other journals. In addition, she is a Senior Member of the IEEE where she holds several positions including the Vice-Chair of the Fuzzy Systems Technical Committee of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, Publicity & Public Relations Chair of IEEE WCCI2018. In addition, she has served on several IEEE committees including the administration committee, vice program chair, special sessions co-chair. Her academic output includes 4 books, 9 book chapters and over 120 journal and conference papers. Her research interests include the development of methods for data mining, multi-dimensional data analysis, multi-mode multi-way data theory, pattern classification, and computational intelligence techniques for which she has received several academic awards.

Rahul Sivagaminathan currently works as a research scientist for Givaudan, world's largest flavor and fragrance manufacturing company headquartered in Switzerland. He has 10+ years of industry experience applying data science and machine learning algorithms. He has been with Givaudan for 8 years now, prior to that he was working for Imagination Engines , a research firm that specialized in finding novel applications of machine learning algorithms for NASA, DoD, AFRL etc. In his current role, he has lead several projects of strategic importance and high visibility. His team's work has been featured in national television twice, once in TechKnow and Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN. He has multiple patents and has authored several first author papers in top tier journals and conference proceedings. Mr. Sivagaminathan has a MS in systems engineering from Missouri University of Science and Technology and a BS in Chemical Engineering from Nagpur University in India.

Chinmay Soman is a Staff Software engineer in Uber. He has a Masters in Computer Science from Stanford University and his areas of interest include distributed systems, big data and security. His past experience includes companies like IBM where he worked on distributed filesystems (NFS) and replication technologies. He then joined the Data Infrastructure team in LinkedIn and worked on Voldemort - an open source distributed key-value store, as well as Apache Samza. He's currently the tech lead of Streaming Analytics platform team at Uber, building a self service platform for doing near real time analytics. He's also a Committer and PMC member in Apache Samza.

Dr. Abdulhamit Subasi is working as a Professor of Information Systems at Effat University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Prior to joining Effat University, he worked at different universities. He was also a Postdoctoral Fellow at Georgia Tech University. Dr. Subasi graduated from Hacettepe University in 1990. He took his M.Sc. degree from Middle East Technical University in 1993, and his Ph.D. degree from Sakarya University in 2001, all in Electrical and Electronics Engineering. His areas of interest are data mining, machine learning, pattern recognition, biomedical signal/image processing, Smart Healthcare, IoT, Big Data, Cybersecurity, computer networks and security. He has worked on several projects related with biomedical signal processing and pattern classification. Dr. Subasi has served as a program organizing committee member of the national and international conferences. He is editorial board member of several scientific journals.

Gürsel A. Süer is a professor in the ISE Department at Ohio University. He has obtained his BSIE and MSIE degrees from Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey and PhD in IE from Wichita State University.  He is on the editorial board of various journals. He has co-chaired two Computers and Industrial Engineering Conferences (1997-Puerto Rico, 2005-Istanbul), ANNIE Conference in 2009. He also initiated Group Technology/Cellular Manufacturing Conferences which were held in 2000-Puerto Rico, 2003-Ohio, 2006-Netherlands, 2009-Japan. He is also organizing a workshop in CM/SERU in Ohio this year.

He has consulted various companies such as AVON, HP, General Dynamics, Ocular Science, Lifescan, Circo Caribe, Allergan America, Excel, Vornado, and carried out several funded projects sponsored by MVESC, TS Trim, Ohio University, NSF, AVON, Checkpoint, and Timberland. Most of his research has been motivated by his experiences and observations in industrial settings. His main interests are applied scheduling, manufacturing system design, supply chain, vehicle routing, logistics, applied optimization, decision making, genetic algorithms and hybrid systems, intelligent systems with human component, modeling competitive business strategies. He has offered workshops in Intelligent Manufacturing and Logistics in various International Conferences and gave key note speeches. He has edited six Conference Proceedings and four special issues with different journals. He has published over 50 journal papers, 10 chapters in edited books, 60 refereed conference papers, 30 conference papers, and made 50 presentations.

Dr. Zeyi Sun is an Assistant Professor at the Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Department at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. He received his Ph.D. degree in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2015, M. Eng. degree in Manufacturing from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2010, and B. Eng degree in Material Science and Engineering from Tongji University in China in 2002. His research interests include energy efficiency management and electricity demand response for sustainable manufacturing systems, onsite microgrid with renewable sources for manufacturing, intelligent maintenance for manufacturing systems, system modeling for biofuel manufacturing, and energy modeling for additive manufacturing.

Dr. Sudeep Tanwar is working as Associate Professor in Computer Engineering Department at Institute of Technology, Nirma University, Ahmedabad, India. He received his Bachelor's of Technology (B.Tech) in Computer Engineering from Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra, Haryana in 2002 and Master's of Technology (M.Tech), with Honours in Information Technology from Guru Gobing Singh Inderprastha University, Delhi (USIT Campus) in 2009. He received his Doctoral Degree (Ph.D.) in Computer Science & Engineering with specialization in Wireless Sensor Network in Jan 2016.

Dr. Huy T. Tran is currently a Research Assistant Professor in the Aerospace Engineering department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL. He received a BS degree from North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC in 2008, and an MS degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, in 2010, both in Mechanical Engineering. He received MS and PhD degrees in Aerospace Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, in 2014 and 2015. He has also worked as a multi-disciplinary systems engineer for the MITRE Corporation. His research interests are diverse and interdisciplinary, centered around the intersection of complex systems design, data analytics, and decision making under uncertainty. His current research focuses on designing resilient systems, through a combination of network science, machine learning and reinforcement learning, optimization, social media analytics, and agent-based modeling. Current application areas include transportation systems and mission planning for autonomous systems. He is a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).