Artificial Intelligence, Optimization, and Data Sciences in Sports

Maude J. Blondin, Eng, has been an assistant professor at the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department at UdeS since Sept. 2020. She is the head of Multiobjective Optimization REsearch lab (MORE Lab) at UdeS, a laboratory that she founded and counts currently 9 students and postdocs. She has strong optimization and control training applied to practical systems with advanced skills in distributed and multiobjective optimization and control algorithms applied to MAS (Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Postdoctoral research in Mechanical and Aerospace engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA). She published a book on the recent progress of optimization in control in 2021 and coedited two contributed books. She is on the editorial board of the SN Operations Research Forum journal. She has published more than 20 peer-reviewed articles in renowned conferences and journals and reviewed more than 55 publications for recognized conferences and high-impact factors journals. She has been invited as a guest speaker on eight national and international occasions. Since the start of her career, i.e., Sept. 2020, she has gathered more than 620k$ as PI/co-PI and more than 500k$ as a co-investigator.

Iztok Fister Jr. received his Master's in bioinformatics from the University of Maribor in 2019, his M.Eng. degree in Computer Science in 2013, and his Ph.D in Computer Science in 2017 from the University of Maribor. He is an associate professor at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science of the University of Maribor, focusing on computational intelligence, data mining, and sports science.

Panos M. Pardalos serves as professor emeritus of industrial and systems engineering at the University of Florida. Additionally, he is the Paul and Heidi Brown Preeminent Professor of industrial and systems engineering. He is also an affiliated faculty member of the computer and information science Department, the Hellenic Studies Center, and the biomedical engineering program. He is also the director of the Center for Applied Optimization. Pardalos is a world-leading expert in global and combinatorial optimization. His recent research interests include network design problems, optimization in telecommunications, e-commerce, data mining, biomedical applications, and massive computing.