Shengxiang Yang

Shengxiang Yang is Professor of Computational Intelligence and Director of the Centre for Computational Intelligence (CCI) at De Montfort University, within the Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Media and the School of Computer Science and Informatics. He is actively involved in research, supervision, and teaching, and leads a vibrant research group in computational intelligence.

Education:

• BSc in Automatic Control, Northeastern University, China (1993)
• MSc in Automatic Control, Northeastern University, China (1996)
• PhD in Systems Engineering, Northeastern University, China (1999)

His primary research interests lie in evolutionary computation, especially in dynamic and uncertain environments. He has made significant contributions to swarm intelligence, meta-heuristics, multi-objective and constrained optimization. His work extends to real-world applications in communication networks, logistics, transportation, and manufacturing systems. His teaching includes research methods and modules in AI, networks, programming, and software engineering at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

The recent publications highlight a strong trend in dynamic optimization, multi-objective problems, and knowledge transfer in evolutionary algorithms. There is increasing integration of machine learning (e.g., LSTM, Q-learning) with evolutionary techniques, and a focus on hybrid and memetic algorithms for complex scheduling and real-world problems.

Scientific Awards and Honors:

• Winner of the 2014 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation Best Student Paper Award
• Nominee for Best Paper Awards at EvoApplications 2016, GECCO 2015, and GECCO 2005
• Visiting Professor at Xiangtan University (2012–2014, 2016–2018) and Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology (2011–2017)

Supervision and Funding: Professor Yang has supervised numerous PhD students, both as first and second supervisor, and has secured substantial research funding from EPSRC, EU Horizon 2020, State Key Laboratory of China, and internal DMU sources. He has led projects on evolutionary computation for dynamic optimization in networks, constrained problems, rail travel, and airport scheduling. He has also coordinated multiple BSc final year projects across institutions.

Professional Leadership: He has held leadership roles in IEEE CIS, including Chair of the Task Force on Evolutionary Computation in Dynamic and Uncertain Environments and Founding Chair of the Task Force on Intelligent Network Systems. He serves on the editorial boards of top journals such as Information Sciences, IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, and Evolutionary Computation.