IEEE Fellow; Corresponding Member of The Romanian Academy; Corresponding Member of The Academy of Technical Sciences of Romania; Professor in the Department of Automation and Applied Informatics, Faculty of Automation and Computers, Politehnica University of Timisoara, Romania; Executive Co-Editor-in-Chief of Information Sciences (Elsevier), Editor-in-Chief of Romanian Journal of Information Science and Technology, Editorial Board Member of IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence (Elsevier), Applied Soft Computing (Elsevier), Expert Systems with Applications (Elsevier), Evolving Systems (Springer), and Applied Artificial Intelligence (Taylor & Francis).