Prof. Weinan Gao, Northeastern University
IEEE Senior Member
Biography:
Weinan Gao (Senior Member, IEEE) received the B.Sc. degree in automation and the M.Sc. degree in control theory and control engineering from Northeastern University, Shenyang, China, in 2011 and 2013, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from New York University, Brooklyn, NY, USA, in 2017. He is a Professor with the State Key Laboratory of Synthetical Automation for Process Industries, Northeastern University, Shenyang. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor with the Mechanical and Civil Engineering, Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, FL, USA, an Assistant Professor with the Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA, USA, and a Visiting Professor of Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory, Cambridge, MA, USA. His research interests include reinforcement learning, adaptive dynamic programming, optimal control, cooperative adaptive cruise control, intelligent transportation systems, sampled-data control systems, and output regulation theory. He was a recipient of the Best Paper Award in IEEE International Conference on Real-Time Computing and Robotics in 2018 and the David Goodman Research Award at New York University in 2019. He was a recipient of the U.S.-NSF Engineering Research Initiation Award. He is a member of editorial board of Neural Computing and Applications and a Technical Committee Member in IEEE Control Systems Society on Nonlinear Systems and Control and in IFAC TC 1.2 Adaptive and Learning Systems. He was an Associate Editor/a Guest Editor of IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica, the IEEE Transactions on Neural Network and Learning Systems, the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs, Neurocomputing, and Control Engineering Practice.
Prof. Lei Shi
Henan University, China
Biography:
His main research direction is collaborative localization and control for autonomous unmanned systems. In recent years, more than 100 academic papers have been published in authoritative journals and conferences in the field of automation, including 25 papers published as first author/corresponding author in Automatica and IEEE Trans. He has successively presided over 10 national/provincial level projects, including the National Natural Science Foundation, Postdoctoral Science Foundation Special Support, and Henan Provincial Key Research and Development, and participated in 3 JKW National Defense Key Projects. He selected for the National Postdoctoral Innovation Talent Support Program and awarded the National Excellent Doctoral Dissertation Award by the Instrumentation Society. He served as a young editorial board member for journals such as the Journal of Engineering Science, Journal of Intelligent Systems, and CAAI Artificial Intelligence Research. He also served as a member of the Computational Society and Social Intelligence Professional Committee of the Automation Society, the Intelligent Command and System Professional Committee of the Chinese Command and Control Society, and the Multimodal Network Professional Committee of the Chinese Communication Society.
Assoc. Prof. Norrima Mokhtar
Universiti Malaya, Malaysia
Biography:
Dr. Norrima Mokhtar is an accomplished academic and researcher in Electrical Engineering, specializing in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Sensors, Automation, Image Processing, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Brain-Computer Interface (BCI), Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), and Robotics. She earned her Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng.) in Electrical Engineering from the University of Malaya in 2000. After graduation, she gained hands-on experience in the International Telecommunication Industry, including a role at Echo Broadband GmbH. In 2002, she was awarded the prestigious Panasonic Scholarship after a rigorous national selection process, allowing her to pursue a Master of Engineering in Oita, Japan, which she completed in 2006. Upon returning to academia, Dr. Norrima joined the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Malaya as a lecturer. Committed to continuous growth, she secured the SLAB/SLAI scholarship to pursue her Ph.D., which she successfully completed in 2012. Throughout her career, she has held key academic and research leadership roles, including Coordinator for Industrial Training, Research Laboratories, and international collaborations with institutions such as Keio University (Japan), Nagaoka University of Technology (Japan), and Manchester Metropolitan University (UK). As a principal investigator, Dr. Norrima has led several high-impact research projects, securing significant funding, including a RM 1 million grant from the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE), along with Science Fund and CREST grants. Her extensive publications in top-tier international journals and conference proceedings highlight her contributions to advancing technology and innovation. Dr. Norrima's expertise in AI-driven systems, automation, and human-machine interaction continues to push the boundaries of research, shaping the future of intelligent technologies and their applications in various industries.