Sankar K. Pal (Life Fellow, IEEE) received the first Ph.D. degree in radio physics and electronics from the University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India, in 1979, and the second Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering along with DIC from Imperial College, University of London, London, UK, in 1982. He is currently National Science Chair, Government of India, and President of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI). He is also Distinguished Scientist and Former Director of ISI, Former Distinguished Professor of the Indian National Science Academy, and Former Chair Professor of the Indian National Academy of Engineering. He founded the Machine Intelligence Unit and the Center for Soft Computing Research: a national facility in the institute in Calcutta. In 1975, he joined ISI as CSIR Senior Research Fellow where he became Full Professor in 1987, Distinguished Scientist in 1998, Director in 2005–2010, and President in 2022–2024.Sabu M. Thampi is a Professor at the School of Computer Science and Engineering, Digital University Kerala, Trivandrum, India. His current research interests include the Internet of Things (IoT), cognitive security, social networks, endpoint security, and smart cyber-physical systems. Sabu is also coordinating the Connected Systems and Intelligence (CSI) Lab at the University. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from the National Institute of Technology Karnataka. Dr. Sabu has been actively involved in funded research projects and published papers in book chapters, journals, and conference proceedings. He has authored and edited a few books, as well as edited 45+ conference proceedings published by Springer in various series, as well as a few others published by IEEE, ACM, and Elsevier.Ajith Abraham received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. He has a Master of Science in Control and Automation from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical and electronic engineering from the University of Calicut, Kerala, India. He has over 32 years of industry and academic experience. His primary research is on developing advanced machine intelligence using hybridization of function approximation methods, approximate reasoning and global optimization methods focused on big data analytics, understanding networks, information security, Web intelligence, decision support systems, the Internet of things, etc. He is Founding Director of Machine Intelligence Research Labs, a not-for-profit Scientific Network for Innovation and Research Excellence connecting industry and academia.
