Dr. Valentina Emilia Balas is currently a Full Professor in the Department of Automatics and Applied Software at the Faculty of Engineering, "Aurel Vlaicu" University of Arad, Romania. She holds a PhD cum Laude in Applied Electronics and Telecommunications from the Polytechnic University of Timisoara. Dr. Balas is the author of more than 350 research papers. Her research interests are in Intelligent Systems, Fuzzy Control, Soft Computing, Smart Sensors, Information Fusion, Modeling and Simulation. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the 'International Journal of Advanced Intelligence Paradigms' and the 'International Journal of Computational Systems Engineering', an editorial board member for several other national and international publications, and an expert evaluator for national and international projects and PhD theses. Dr.

Balas is the director of Intelligent Systems Research Centre in Aurel Vlaicu University of Arad and Director of the Department of International Relations, Programs and Projects in the same university. She served as General Chair of the International Workshop Soft Computing and Applications (SOFA) in nine editions organized in the interval 2005-2020 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. Now she is 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). Dr. Balas was past Vice-president (responsible with 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 and recipient of the "Tudor Tanasescu" Prize from the Romanian Academy for contributions in the field of soft computing methods (2019).