Riccardo Poli is a professor in the Department of Computing and Electronic Systems at the University of Essex, Colchester, UK. His main research interests include genetic programming, particle swarm optimization, the theory of evolutionary algorithms, and biomedical engineering. He has published more than 300 refereed papers on evolutionary algorithms, biomedical engineering, neural networks, and image/signal processing. He was a co-founder of the Essex BCI-NE group in 2004. He co-authored the books Foundations of Genetic Programming (Springer, 2002) and A Field Guide to Genetic Programming (Lulu, 2008). He has been chair of numerous international conferences. He is an associate editor of the Evolutionary Computation journal, the Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines journal, and the International Journal of Computational Intelligence Research, an advisory board member for the Journal of Artificial Evolution and Applications, and a member of the editorial board of Swarm Intelligence. He is one of the founding members of the Brain-Computer Interfaces Group at the University of Essex. He is a Senior Fellow of The International Society for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (now ACM SIGEVO) and a recipient of the Evo* award for outstanding contributions to the field of evolutionary computation.
Ali Kafash Hoshiar is a senior lecturer (associate professor) in Robotics at the University of Essex, where he leads the Robotics for Under Millimeter Interventions (RUMI) lab. He was awarded the EPSRC-funded 'In-Target' project as the principal investigator (PI) and is the recipient of the 'Best Interdisciplinary Research Award' at the University of Essex. Since joining the University of Essex in 2019, he has been advancing the field of small-scale robotics and soft robotics, focusing on actuation, sensing, and control, particularly in medical and agri-tech applications. His interest extends to the modelling, simulation, and development of mechatronic systems. Before his current role, he was engaged in research on the development of soft continuum magnetic robots for surgical interventions. He was involved in the development of soft continuum microrobots for angioplasty applications at the DGIST-ETH Joint Microrobotics Research Centre, a collaboration between Switzerland and South Korea. In South Korea, he also collaborated with the GIST Intelligence Medical Robotics Laboratory to advance magnetic-based robotics systems. In Essex, he supervises the Robotics for Under Millimetre Intervention Lab where the EPSRC for the 'In-Target' project is hosted. His work is focused on contributing to the fields of healthcare and agriculture, emphasizing the practical application of advanced soft robotics.
