Dr. Rajkumar Buyya is Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor and Director of the Cloud Computing and
Distributed Systems (CLOUDS) Laboratory at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is also serving as the
founding CEO of Manjrasoft, a spin-off company of the University, commercializing its innovations in Cloud
Computing. He has authored over 650 publications and seven textbooks including Mastering Cloud Computing
from McGraw Hill, China Machine Press, and Morgan Kaufmann for Indian, Chinese and international markets
respectively. Dr. Buyya is one of the most highly-cited authors in Computer Sience and Software Engineering
worldwide. “A Scientometric Analysis of Cloud Computing Literature” by German scientists ranked Dr. Buyya
as the World's Top-Cited Author and the World's Most-Productive Author in Cloud Computing. He has been
recognized as a Web of Science “Highly Cited Researcher” for four consecutive years since 2016. Dr. Buyya
was recognized as Scopus Researcher of the Year 2017 with Excellence in Innovative Research Award from
Elsevier; "Lifetime Achievement Awards" from two Indian universities, and the “Best of the World,” in the
Computing Systems field, by The Australian 2019 Research Review. Software technologies for Grid, Cloud, and
Fog computing developed under Dr. Buyya's leadership have gained rapid acceptance and are in use at several
academic institutions and commercial enterprises in 40 countries around the world. Dr. Buyya has led the
establishment and development of key community activities, including serving as foundation Chair of the IEEE
Technical Committee on Scalable Computing and five IEEE/ACM conferences. These contributions and the
international research leadership of Dr. Buyya are recognized through the award of the “2009 IEEE Medal for
Excellence in Scalable Computing” from the IEEE Computer Society TCSC. Manjrasoft's Aneka Cloud
technology developed under his leadership has received the "Frost & Sullivan New Product Innovation Award."
Dr. Buyya served as founding Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing. He is currently
serving as Editor-in-Chief of Software: Practice and Experience, a long-standing journal in the field, established
more than 50 years ago.
Dr. Muhammad Imran Tariq is a Professor of Computer Science at Superior University, Lahore, Pakistan. He
received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Superior University. Dr. Tariq has attained the MCSE, MCP+I,
A+, and CCNA certifications. His research interests include Cloud Computing, Information Security standards,
Service Level Agreement, Information Security Metrics, Cloud Risks, and its mitigation techniques, Wireless
Networks Security, Image processing, Deep Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Sensor Networks, Multi-Criteria
Decision Making, Fuzzy Logic, and Risk Management. He is the author of two books on Cloud Security and also
the author of three contributed book chapters. Dr. Tariq is Associate Editor of IEEE Access and Member of the
Editorial Board for SCIREA Journal of Computers. Dr. Tariq is also a member of the research group of the Cloud
Security Alliance.
Valentina Emilia Balas is currently a Full Professor in the Department of Automatics and Applied Software at the Faculty of Engineering, “Aurel Vlaicu” University of Arad, Romania. She holds a PhD cum Laude in Applied Electronics and Telecommunications from the Polytechnic University of Timisoara. Dr. Balas is the author of more than 350 research papers. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the 'International Journal of Advanced Intelligence Paradigms' and the 'International Journal of Computational Systems Engineering', an editorial board member for several other national and international publications, and an expert evaluator for national and international projects and PhD theses.
Dr. Guojun Wang is a Pearl River Scholarship Distinguished Professor of Higher Education in Guangdong
Province, a Vice Dean and a Doctoral Supervisor of the School of Computer Science, Guangzhou University,
China. He received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science, at Central South University, China. He received the
2014 First Prize of the National Natural Science Award, State Council of the People's Republic of China. He was
listed in "Chinese Most Cited Researchers" (Computer Science) by Elsevier in the past five consecutive years.
He was formerly a Professor at Central South University, China; an Adjunct Professor at Temple University,
USA; a Visiting Scholar at Florida Atlantic University, USA; a Visiting Researcher at the University of Aizu,
Japan; and a Research Fellow at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, HK. His research interests include
Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, cloud computing, mobile computing, trustworthy/dependable computing,
cyberspace security, recommendation systems, and mobile healthcare systems. He has published more than 400
technical papers and books/chapters in the above areas. His research is supported by Key Project of the National
Natural Science Foundation of China, the National High-Tech Research and Development Plan of China (863
Plan), and the Ministry of Education Fund for Doctoral Disciplines in Higher Education. He has served as an
associate editor or on the editorial board of several international journals, including IEEE Transactions on
Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS), Security and Communication Networks (SCN), and International
Journal of Parallel, Emergent and Distributed Systems (IJPEDS). He is the Leading Steering Chair of the IEEE
International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (TrustCom), the
Leading Steering Chair of the International Conference on Security, Privacy and Anonymity in Computation,
Communication and Storage (SpaCCS), and the Leading Steering Chair of the International Conference on Smart
City and Informatization (iSCI).
Radu Prodan is professor of distributed systems at the Institute of Information Technology (ITEC), University of Klagenfurt, Austria. He was an associate professor at the University of Innsbruck until 2018. His research interests include performance, optimization, and resource management tools for parallel and distributed systems, as well as middleware system tools for cloud, fog, and edge computing. He has participated in numerous projects, including coordinating the Horizon 2020 project ARTICONF. He has coauthored over 200 publications and received three IEEE best paper awards. He is a member of ACM.
