Lixin Tang received the B.Eng. degree in industrial automation, the M.Eng. degree in systems engineering, and the Ph.D. degree in control theory and application from Northeastern University, Shenyang, China, in 1988, 1991, and 1996, respectively. He is currently a fellow of the Chinese Academy of Engineering; the Director of the Key Laboratory of Data Analytics and Optimization for Smart Industry, Ministry of Education, China; and the Head of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science. His research areas cover industrial big data, data analytics and machine learning, deep learning and evolutionary learning, reinforcement learning and dynamic optimization, convex and sparse optimization, integral and combinational optimization, and computational intelligent optimization. Dr. Tang also serves as an Associate Editor for IISE Transactions, IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, Journal of Scheduling, the International Journal of Production Research, and Journal of the Operational Research Society, an Area Editor for the Asia-Pacific Journal of Operational Research, and on the Editorial Board of Annals of Operations Research.

Shaoyuan Li received the B.S. degree in automatic control and M.S. degree in electrical engineering from the Department of Automatic Control, Hebei University of Technology, in 1987 and 1992, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in automatic control theory and application from Nankai University, in 1997. Since July 1997, he has been with the Department of Automation, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, where he is currently a Chair Professor. His research interests include model predictive control, hierarchical control, intelligent control, and their industrial applications.

Speech Title: The History and Progress of MFAC Theory

Zhongsheng Hou received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from Jilin University of Technology, Jilin, China, in 1983 and 1988, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from Northeastern University, Shenyang, China, in 1994. From 1997 to 2018, he was with Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, China, where he was a Distinguished Professor and the Founding Director of Advanced Control Systems Lab, and the Head of the Department of Automatic Control. He is currently a Chair Professor with Qingdao University, Qingdao, China. His research interests are in the fields of data-driven control, model-free adaptive control, learning control, and intelligent transportation systems. He has authored two monographs, Nonparametric Model and its Adaptive Control Theory, Science Press (in Chinese), 1999, and Model Free Adaptive Control: Theory and Applications, CRC Press, 2013. His pioneering work on model-free adaptive control has been verified in more than 200 different field applications, laboratory equipment and simulations with practical background, including wide-area power systems, lateral control of autonomous vehicles, temperature control of silicon rod. Prof. Hou is the Founding Chair of the Technical Committee on Data Driven Control, Learning and Optimization (DDCLO), Chinese Association of Automation (CAA), and is also a CAA Fellow, IEEE Fellow, and AAIA Fellow. Dr. Hou was the Guest Editor for two Special Sections on the topic of data-driven control of the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks in 2011, and the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics in 2017.

Speech Title: Analysis of Multisensory Mutual-Associative Memory Circuits

Zhigang Zeng, IEEE Fellow, Professor, the Dean of the School of Artificial Intelligence and Automation of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and the Director of the Key Laboratory of Image Information Processing and Intelligent Control of the Ministry of Education. He received his PhD in System Analysis and Integration from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in June 2003. He did postdoctoral research at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the University of Science and Technology of China. He served as the editorial board member of IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, Cognitive Computation, Neural Networks, Applied Soft Computing, Acta Automatica Sinica, Control Engineering, Systems Engineering and Electronics, and Control Theory and Applications. He has been awarded the first prize of Natural Science Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scientific Research of Higher Education Institutions by the Ministry of Education, the first prize of Natural Science Award of Hubei Province, the first prize of Science and Technology Progress Award of Hubei Province, and the second prize of National Science and Technology Progress Award, etc.