Keynote Speakers of 2025

Fellow of lEEE
Director-Artificial Intelligence Lab, Digital Forensics and Machine Intelligence
University of Campinas, Brazil

Speech Title: Digital Forensics in the Era of Artificial Intelligence

Biography: Anderson Rocha (IEEE Fellow) is Full-Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Forensics at the Institute of Computing, University of Campinas (Unicamp), Brazil. His main interests include Artificial Intelligence and Digital Forensics. He is the Head of the Artificial Intelligence Lab., Recod.ai, at Unicamp and was the former Director of the Institute for the 2019-2023 term. He is an elected affiliate of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (ABC) and the Brazilian Academy of Forensic Sciences (ABC). He is a three-term elected member of the IEEE Information Forensics and Security Technical Committee (IFS-TC) and a former chair of such committee. In 2023, he was elected again to the IFS-TC chair for the 2025-2026 term. He has actively been an editor of important international journals and the chair of key conferences in Al and digital forensics. He is a Microsoft Research and a Google Research Faculty Fellow, important academic recognitions given to researchers by Microsoft Research and Google. In addition, in 2016, he was awarded the Tan Chin Tuan (TCT) Fellowship, a recognition promoted by the Tan Chin Tuan Foundation in Singapore. Since 2023, he is also an Asia Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association Fellow. He has been the principal investigator of several research projects in partnership with public funding agencies in Brazil and abroad and national and multi-national companies, having already filed and licensed several patents. He is ranked among the Top 2% of research scientists worldwide, according to PlosOne/Stanford and Research.com studies. Finally, he is a LinkedIn Top Voice in Artificial Intelligence for continuously raising awareness of Al and its potential impacts on society at large.

 

Fellow of lEEE
Mary K. Finley Missouri Distinguished Professor
Director, Kummer Institute Center for Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems (KICAIAS)
Director, Applied Computational Intelligence Laboratory
Missouri University of Science and Technology, USA

Speech Title: It's not AI. The literally fatal flaws of Artificial Stupidity. Can Fuzzy Logic Help?

Abstract: The culture of AI has led to many impressive demos. But this is not a good fit for high-consequence problems such as security, safety, healthcare, transportation, and privacy. We therefore need to learn from the culture of various fields that have grappled with these challenges for decades. But we also have much to learn from the legacy of Lotfi Zadeh. Some suggestions will be given to get us back on track. I wish I could say “back on track before it’s too late.” But it’s already too late. Much damage has already been done. We can and urgently need to do better.

Bio: Donald C. Wunsch II is the Mary Finley Missouri Distinguished Professor and Director, Kummer Institute Center for Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems at Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T). He is also Director of the Applied Computational Intelligence Laboratory. Earlier employers were: Texas Tech University, Boeing, Rockwell International and International Laser Systems. His education includes: Ph.D., Electrical Engineering - University of Washington (Seattle), Executive MBA - Washington University in St. Louis, M.S., Applied Mathematics - University of Washington (Seattle), B.S., Applied Mathematics - University of New Mexico (Albuquerque), and Jesuit Core Honors Program, Seattle University. He also completed the Kellogg Executive Scholar graduate certificate program in Nonprofit Management at Northwestern University. Key research contributions are real-time design of Unsupervised and Reinforcement Learning and their applications. He is an IEEE Fellow and previous International Neural Networks Society (INNS) President, INNS Fellow, NSF CAREER Awardee, and recipient of the 2015 INNS Gabor Award, 2019 INNS Ada Lovelace Service Award, and 2023 IEEE Neural Networks Pioneer Award. He served as IJCNN General Chair, and on several Boards, including the St. Patrick’s School Board, Missouri S&T Newman Center Board, IEEE Neural Networks Council, INNS Board of Governors, and the University of Missouri Bioinformatics Consortium, chaired the Missouri S&T Information Technology and Computing Committee as well as the Student Design and Experiential Learning Center Board. He served as Interim Director of the Missouri S&T Intelligent Systems Center and as a Program Director at the National Science Foundation. He has produced 25 Ph.D. recipients in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Systems Engineering and Computer Science.

 

Senior Member of lEEE
Brock University, Canada

Speech Title: Computational Intelligence for the generation and analysis of biological networks

Abstract: Biological networks such as those that record interactions between genes or proteins are considered complex networks. These are large graphs that have non-trivial topological features, making them hard to analyze. However, they still have inherent properties such as the existence of communities of highly-connected nodes. This talk will present computational intelligence approaches that have been used to generate and analyze complex networks, with a special focus on biological networks.

Biography: Sheridan Houghten is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at Brock University, where she has also previously served terms as chair and as graduate program director. Her research interests include combinatorial optimization, computational intelligence, and algorithms. Her research is directed at various application areas including bioinformatics and graphs, with her research group developing computational techniques, algorithms, and tools for the modelling and analysis of biological and biomedical data, especially in the form of graphs or networks. She is also a very active senior member within the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS), within which she has filled many roles.