Women in Soft Computing

Dr. Vanita Garg, received her PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, studying Applied Mathematics. She teaches at Galgotia University, specializing in Nature Inspired Optimization Techniques. Her research areas include Operational Research, Unconstrained Optimization Problems, Constrained Optimization Problems, and Biogeography Based Optimization Algorithm.

Dr. Kusum Deep, is a full Professor, with the Department of Mathematics, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India and Visiting Professor, Liverpool Hope University, UK and University of Technology Sydney, Australia. With B.Sc Hons & M.Sc Hons. School from Centre for Advanced Studies, Panjab University, Chandigarh, she is an M.Phil Gold Medalist. She earned her PhD from UOR (now IIT Roorkee) in 1988. She has been a national scholarship holder and a Post Doctoral from Loughborough University, UK assisted by International Bursary funded by Commission of European Communities, Brussels. She has won numerous awards like Khosla Research Award, UGC Career Award, Starred Performer of IITR Faculty, best paper awards by Railway Bulletin of Indian Railways, special facilitation in memory of late Prof. M. C. Puri, AIAP Excellence Award. She has authored two books, supervised 20 PhDs, and published 125 research papers. She is a Senior Member of ORSI, CSI, IMS and ISIM. She is the Executive Editor of International Journal of Swarm Intelligence, Inderscience. She is Associate Editor of Swarm and Evolutionary Algorithms, Elsevier and is on the editorial board of many journals. She is the Founder President of Soft Computing Research Society, India. She is the General Chair of series of International Conference on Soft Computing for Problems Solving (SocProS). Her research interests are Evolutionary Algorithms, Swarm Intelligence and nature inspired optimization techniques and their applications.

Valentina E. Balas is currently Full Professor in the Department of Automatics and Applied Software at the Faculty of Engineering, “Aurel Vlaicu” University of Arad, Romania. She holds a Ph.D. Cum Laude, in Applied Electronics and Telecommunications from Polytechnic University of Timisoara. Dr. Balas is author of more than 400 research papers in refereed journals and International Conferences. Her research interests are in Intelligent Systems, Fuzzy Control, Soft Computing, Smart Sensors, Information Fusion, Modeling and Simulation. She is the Editor-in Chief to International Journal of Advanced Intelligence Paradigms (IJAIP) and to International Journal of Computational Systems Engineering (IJCSysE), member in Editorial Board member of several national and international journals and is evaluator expert for national, international projects and PhD Thesis. Dr. Balas is the Head of Intelligent Systems Research Centre in Aurel Vlaicu University of Arad and Head of the Department of International Relations in the same university. She served as General Chair of the International Workshop Soft Computing and Applications (SOFA) in ten editions organized in the interval 2005-2022 and held in Romania and Hungary. Dr. Balas participated in many international conferences as Organizer, Honorary Chair, Session Chair, member in Steering, Advisory or International Program Committees and Keynote Speaker. Recently she was working in a national project with EU funding support: BioCell-NanoART = Novel Bio-inspired Cellular Nano-Architectures - For Digital Integrated Circuits, 3M Euro from National Authority for Scientific Research and Innovation. She is a member of European Society for Fuzzy Logic and Technology (EUSFLAT), member of Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) and a Senior Member IEEE, member in Technical Committee – Fuzzy Systems (IEEE Computational Intelligence Society), chair of the Task Force 14 in Technical Committee – Emergent Technologies (IEEE CIS), member in Technical Committee – Soft Computing (IEEE SMCS). She is member in the Committee of IEEE Romania Section as Volunteers Training Coordinator and vice chair of IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Chapter – CIS 11. During the interval 2021-2022 she was a member of IEEE European Public Policy Committee Working Group on ICT. From May 2023 Dr. Balas is associate member of Romanian Academy of Scientists. Dr. Balas was past Vice President (awards) of IFSA - International Fuzzy Systems Association Council (2013-2015), is a Joint Secretary of the Governing Council of Forum for Interdisciplinary Mathematics (FIM), - A Multidisciplinary Academic Body, India. She is the recipient of the "Tudor Tanasescu" Prize from the Romanian Academy for contributions in the field of soft computing methods (2019) and “Stefan Odobleja” Prize from Romanian Academy of Scientists (2023).