Thomas Bäck is a full Professor of Computer Science at Leiden University, The Netherlands. He received his PhD, under the supervision of Hans-Paul Schwefel, from Dortmund University, Germany in 1994, and worked for the Informatik Centrum Dortmund from 1994 to 2000. He is president and founder of divis intelligent solutions, a company providing optimization and data mining software and consulting services; among its clients are companies such as Audi, BMW, Daimler, Ford and Honda. He has more than 200 publications on natural computing algorithms; he wrote the book Evolutionary Algorithms: Theory and Practice, coedited the Handbook of Evolutionary Computation, and coedited the Handbook of Natural Computing. He received the best dissertation award from the Gesellschaft für Informatik (GI) in 1995 and is an elected fellow of the Intl. Society for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation. Christophe Foussette is a software development expert at divis intelligent solutions, Dortmund, Germany; previously he worked for NuTech Solutions. He received his MSc from Dortmund University in 2013. He specializes in data mining and nonlinear optimization algorithms based on evolution strategies, applied to complex industrial problems. Peter Krause is the head of project management and R&D at divis intelligent solutions, Dortmund, Germany. He received his PhD from Dortmund University in 2001. His research focused on data mining, fuzzy logic and the generation and optimization of fuzzy systems. From 2002 to 2009 he worked with NuTech Solutions as senior scientist and project manager, supervising customer projects and developing new methods in the field of data-driven modeling and model analysis. He has authored than 30 research publications, and has considerable experience in deploying single- and multiobjective contemporary evolution strategies for practical problems in industry; he also is an expert in object-oriented development, GUI development, SQL and C/C++.
