Professor Sifeng Liu, PhD., SM IEEE, is an Honorary Fellow of the WOSC, and Senior Fellow of the Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowships of the 7th Research Framework Programme of the European Commission. Sifeng Liu received PhD in systems engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China, in 1998. Dr. Liu is currently a distinguished professor at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a research professor at De Montfort University. He is the founding director of the Institute for Grey Systems Studies, the founding chair of TC of IEEE SMC on Grey Systems, and the founding president of the Grey Systems Society of China. Professor Yingjie Yang is currently a full Professor of Computational Intelligence at the Centre for Computational Intelligence of De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. He received his BSc (Hons.

), MSc and PhD degrees in engineering from Northeastern University, Shenyang, China, in 1987, 1990, and 1994, respectively. He was awarded his PhD degree in computer science at Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK, in 2008. Before joining De Montfort University in 2002, Dr. Yang had worked at Beijing Jiaotong University, Nottingham Trent University and Loughborough University in connection with various research projects. Professor Jeffrey Forrest earned his educational degrees in pure mathematics. His PhD degree was granted in 1988 by Auburn University, Alabama; and he did one year of post-doctoral research in statistics at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, from 1990 to 1991. Dr. Forrest is currently a specially appointed professor of economics, finance, and systems science at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, a specially appointed professor of mathematics and systems science at National University of Defense Technology, China, and a tenured professor of mathematics at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Forrest is a founder and the current president of the International Institute for General Systems Studies (IIGSS), a non-profit organization registered in PA in the mid-1990s.