Invited speakers
Professor Andries Engelbrecht
Andries P. Engelbrecht holds a joint appointment as professor in the Department of Industrial Engigneering and the Computer Science Division at Stellenbosch University, South Africa.
He holds a PhD in Computer Science from Stellenbosch University. His research spans computational intelligence, including swarm intelligence, evolutionary computation, artificial neural networks, hyper-heuristics, fitness landscape analysis, and data analytics. He has served in numerous editorial capacities: he is Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence; Associate Editor for Swarm Intelligence, Evolutionary Computation, Complex & Intelligent Systems, and the International Journal of Cognitive Computing in Engineering. He is also Series Editor for the Artificial Intelligence book series at IntechOpen.
He has published over 460 papers, and is the author of two books, i.e. Computational Intelligence: An Introduction, and Foundations of Computational Swarm Intelligence. He holds an A-rating from the National Research Foundation, and holds awards as fellow of the Soft Computing Research Society of India and as Pioneer in Computer Science, Information Systems, and Information Communication Technologies in South Africa in 2024.
Professor Bill Tucker
Bill Tucker is a Professor of Computer Science at Stellenbosch University.
His research explores community-based co-production of technologies with and for vulnerable and marginalised communities. Bill is mostly known for two long-term projects: rural community networks and assistive technology for Deaf communities. Current work addresses renarration of mainstream educational content with San and Deaf schools; collection of childhood development index data in all official South African languages; and providing pharmacy information to South Africans in all 12 official languages.
All of these efforts entail the responsible use of large language models (LLMs) and generative artificial intelligence (GAI). The work aims to leverage evidence-based outputs to enable sustainable entities, e.g. a non-profit spin-off, to make genuine social impact. Bill chairs the Faculty of Science Social Impact committee; and is a MICT SETA 4IR Research Chair, NRF B-rated and known for building collaborative multi-disciplinary relationships.
Professor Kumar Venayagamoorthy
G. Kumar Venayagamoorthy is the Duke Energy Distinguished Professor of Power Engineering and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Clemson University since January 2012.
Prior to that, he was a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T), Rolla, USA where he was from 2002 to 2011. Dr. Venayagamoorthy is the Founder and Director of the Real-Time Power and Intelligent Systems Laboratory at Clemson University. Dr. Venayagamoorthy holds the position of an Extraordinary Professor in the Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.
Dr. Venayagamoorthy received his PhD and MScEng degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Natal, Durban, South Africa. He received his BEng degree with a First-Class Honors in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi, Nigeria. He holds an MBA degree in Entrepreneurship and Innovation from Clemson University, USA.
Dr. Venayagamoorthy is a recipient of 2004 U.S. NSF CAREER award and 2007 U.S. Office of the Naval Research Young Investigator Award. His research interests are in the development and innovation of power systems, smart grids and artificial intelligence technologies. He is an inventor of technologies for scalable computational intelligence for complex systems and dynamic stochastic optimal power flow. Dr. Venayagamoorthy has published over 600 refereed technical articles which are cited over 26,000 times with a h-index of 74 and i10-index of > 300. Professor Venayagamoorthy has given over 500 technical presentations (including 40 keynotes and plenaries) in over 50 countries to date.
Dr. Venayagamoorthy is a Fellow of the IEEE, IET (UK), the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers (SAIEE) and Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association (AAIA), and a Senior Member of the International Neural Network Society (INNS). He is the 2026 INNS President-Elect. Dr. Venayagamoorthy is the Chair and Founder of the IEEE PES Working Group on Intelligent Control Systems and IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) Task Force on Smart Grid. He has served/serves as Editor/Associate Editor/Guest Editor of several IEEE Transactions and Elsevier Journals. He is the Editor for the IEEE Press Series on Power and Energy Systems. He is a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE CIS, IAS, IES and PES. He was a 2024 U.S. Fulbright Scholar to South Africa. He is the General Chair for 2027 INNS-IEEE International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, Cape Town, South Africa.