Adil Bagirov is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Informatics and Applied Optimization, School of Information Technology and Mathematical Sciences, University of Ballarat, Australia. He graduated from Baku State University (Azerbaijan) in Applied Mathematics / Operations Research, and holds PhD degrees in Mathematics from the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, and from the University of Ballarat.

Dr. Bagirov has written some 50 research articles that appeared in professional journals. Please see the illustrative references and visit the web site http://www.ballarat.edu.au/ard/itms/staff/abagirov.shtml for further information.

Gleb Beliakov has 15 years experience in modelling intelligent and complex systems. His most significant contributions include the development of new methods of global optimization, machine learning via constrained approximation and their applications to fuzzy systems, artificial intelligence, medicine, electronics and chemistry.

He developed clinical decision support system Care Plan On Line for South Australian Health Commission, which was deployed to General Practitioners in this state. He has also written several software packages and libraries for learning from data, approximation and optimisation. He is the author of some 70 refereed research papers in the mentioned fields, and was a plenary speaker at a number of international conferences. He routinely serves as a referee to various international journals, and he is an associate editor of IEEE Transactions of Fuzzy Systems journal. In 1994 Dr. G.Beliakov was awarded the European Academic Software Award for his work in computer linguistics software development. He has extensive industrial experience in scientific and decision support software development (since 1986), ranging from optical instrumentation to linguistics, to medical expert systems.

Musa Mammadov is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Informatics and Applied Optimization, School of Information Technology and Mathematical Sciences, University of Ballarat, Australia. He graduated from Baku State University (Azerbaijan) in Mathematics. He holds PhD degrees in Mathematics from Leningrad (St.Petersburg) State University, Russia, and in Mathematics and IT from the University of Ballarat, Australia.

His research interests are: Optimal Control Theory, Optimization, Data Mining, Fuzzy Sets. He is the author of the global optimization method DSO in GANSO. Please see the illustrative references and visit http://uob-community.ballarat.edu.au/~mmammadov for further information.

Alexander M. Rubinov is Professor and Founding Director of the Centre for Informatics and Applied Optimization, School of Information Technology and Mathematical Sciences, University of Ballarat, Australia. He graduated from Leningrad State University, Russia. He holds a PhD in Mathematics from Leningrad State University, and a DSc in Mathematics from the Academy of Sciences of the (former) Soviet Union.

Professor Rubinov has published extensively: he wrote and edited books, and wrote numerous articles that appeared in professional journals worldwide. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Global Optimization, Optimization, Optimization Methods and Software, and of the Pacific Journal on Optimization. He has presented lectures and worked in Europe, the former Soviet Union, Asia, and the Pacific Rim, including Australia and New Zealand.

Please see the illustrative references and visit http://uob-community.ballarat.edu.au/~arubinov/ for further information.