Panos Pardalos is a Distinguished Emeritus Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Florida, and an affiliated faculty of Biomedical Engineering and Computer Science & Information & Engineering departments. He is a world-renowned leader in Global Optimization, Mathematical Modeling, Energy Systems, Financial applications, and Data Sciences. He is a Fellow of AAAS, AAIA, AIMBE, EUROPT, and INFORMS and was awarded the 2013 Constantin Caratheodory Prize of the International Society of Global Optimization. In addition, Panos Pardalos has been awarded the 2013 EURO Gold Medal prize bestowed by the Association for European Operational Research Societies. This medal is the preeminent European award given to Operations Research (OR) professionals for "scientific contributions that stand the test of time." He has also been awarded the prestigious Humboldt Research Award (2018–2019). The Humboldt Research Award is granted in recognition of a researcher's entire achievements to date — fundamental discoveries, new theories, insights that have had significant impact on their discipline.
Themistocles M. Rassias is Emeritus professor of mathematics at the National Technical University of Athens. His research interests include nonlinear analysis, global analysis, approximation theory, functional analysis, functional equations, inequalities and their applications. Professor Rassias received his PhD in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1976; his thesis advisor was Stephen Smale and his academic advisor was Shiing-Shen Chern. In addition to his extensive list of journal publications, Professor Rassias has published as author or volume editor several books published with Springer. Th. M. Rassias has received several awards and is an active editorial board member of an array of journals in mathematical analysis and optimization. His publications have received a large number of citations, with h-index 47.