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Professor Shengxiang Yang

Job: Professor of Computational Intelligence, Director of the Centre for Computational Intelligence (CCI)

Faculty: Computing, Engineering and Media

School/department: School of Computer Science and Informatics

Research group(s): Centre for Computational Intelligence (CCI)

Address: De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester, LE1 9BH UK

T: +44 (0)116 207 8805

E: syang@dmu.ac.uk

W: http://www.tech.dmu.ac.uk/~syang/

 

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Personal profile

Shengxiang Yang is Professor of Computational Intelligence and Director of the Centre of Computational Intelligence (CCI), De Montfort University. Before joining the CCI in July 2012, he worked at Brunel University, University of Leicester, and King's College London as a Senior Lecturer, Lecturer, and Post-doctoral Research Associate, respectively.

Shengxiang's main research interests lie in evolutionary computation. He is particularly active in the area of evolutionary computation in dynamic and uncertain environments. Shengxiang has also published on the application of evolutionary computation in communication networks, logistics, transportation systems, and manufacturing systems, etc.

Research group affiliations

Centre for Computational Intelligence

Publications and outputs

  • A synthetic data generation method and evolutionary transformer model for degradation trajectory prediction in Lithium-ion batteries
    dc.title: A synthetic data generation method and evolutionary transformer model for degradation trajectory prediction in Lithium-ion batteries dc.contributor.author: Jin, Haiyan; Ru, Rui; Cai, Lei; Meng, Jinhao; Wang, Bin; Peng, Jichang; Yang, Shengxiang dc.description.abstract: Identifying the long-term degradation of lithium-ion batteries in their early usage phase is crucial for the battery management system (BMS) to properly maintain the battery for practical use. Nevertheless, this procedure is challenging due to variations in the production and operating conditions of the battery. In recent years, it has been empirically proven that the data-driven method is a promising solution for handling the prediction of degradation. However, the lack of appropriate data remains the main obstacle that impacts the ultimate performance of the prediction. Furthermore, the prediction is also influenced by the setup of the predictor, which covers the structure of neural networks and their hyperparameters. The challenge of automating this process remains unresolved. In this study, we propose a novel degradation trajectory prediction framework. First, synthetic data is generated via a conditional generative adversarial network (CGAN), providing the characterization of the battery’s degradation at an early stage and utilizing the argument data to alleviate the issue of insufficient data. Second, an evaluation method to evaluate the quality of the synthetic data is also provided. In addition, a selection method is proposed based on the diversity mechanism to further filter out the redundancy of synthetic data. These two sub-processes aim to promote the quality of the synthetic data. Finally, the synthetic data hybrid with real values is used for the training of a transformer model, whose architecture and hyper-parameters are automatically configured via an evolutionary framework. The experimental results show that the proposed method can achieve accurate predictions compared to its rivals, and its best configuration can be automatically configured without hand-crafted efforts. dc.description: The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.
  • Adapting genetic algorithms for multifunctional landscape decisions: a theoretical case study on wild bees and farmers in the UK
    dc.title: Adapting genetic algorithms for multifunctional landscape decisions: a theoretical case study on wild bees and farmers in the UK dc.contributor.author: Knight, Ellen; Balzter, Heiko; Breeze, Tom; Brettschneider, Julia; Girling, Robbie; Hagen-Zanker, Alex; Image, Mike; Johnson, Colin; Lee, Christopher; Lovett, Andrew; Petrovskii, Sergei; Varah, Alexa; Whelan, Mick; Yang, Shengxiang; Gardner, Emma dc.description.abstract: 1. Spatial modelling approaches to aid land-use decisions which benefit both wildlife and humans are often limited to the comparison of pre-determined landscape scenarios, which may not reflect the true optimum landscape for any end-user. Furthermore, the needs of wildlife are often under-represented when considered alongside human financial interests in these approaches. 2. We develop a method of addressing these gaps using a case-study of wild bees in the UK, an important group whose declines may adversely affect both human economies and surrounding ecosystems. By combining the genetic algorithm NSGA-II with a process-based pollinator model which simulates bee foraging and population dynamics, Poll4pop, we ‘evolve’ a typical UK agricultural landscape to identify optimum land cover configurations for three different guilds of wild bee. These configurations are compared to those resulting from optimisations for farm income alone, as well as optimisations that seek a compromise between bee populations and farm income objectives. 3. We find that the land cover proportions in landscapes optimised for each bee guild reflect their nesting habitat preferences rather than foraging preferences, highlighting a limiting resource within the study landscape. The spatially explicit nature of these optimised landscapes illustrates how improvement for a given target species may be limited by differences between their movement range and the scale of the units being improved. Land cover composition and configuration differ significantly in landscapes optimised for farm income and bee population growth simultaneously and illustrate how human agents are required to compromise much more when the multifaceted nature of biodiversity is recognised and represented by multiple objectives within an optimisation framework. Our methods provide a way to quantify the extent to which real-life landscapes promote or compromise objectives for different landscape end-users. 4. Our investigation suggests that optimisation set-up (decision-unit scales, traditional choice of a single biodiversity metric) can bias outcomes towards human-centric solutions. It also demonstrates the importance of representing the individual requirements of different actors with different landscape-level needs when using genetic algorithms to support biodiversity-inclusive decision-making in multi-functional landscapes. dc.description: open access article
  • Learning to search promising regions by space partitioning for evolutionary methods
    dc.title: Learning to search promising regions by space partitioning for evolutionary methods dc.contributor.author: Xia, Hai; Li, Changhe; Tan, Qingshan; Zeng, Sanyou; Yang, Shengxiang dc.description.abstract: To alleviate the premature, many evolutionary computation algorithms try to balance the exploitation and exploration by controlling the population diversity. However, randomly diversifying a population cannot always guarantee that an algorithm exploits or explores promising regions. To address this issue, a general framework is proposed in this paper for learning promising regions that are made up of subspaces to guide where to exploit and explore by two reinforcement learning systems. The learning mechanism is as follows: (1) To enhance the efficiency of exploitation, an exploitative reinforcement learning system is constructed to estimate the exploitative potential values of subspaces. Accordingly, basins of attraction are approximated by clustering subspaces and historical solutions are selected within the same basin of attraction to generate new solutions. (2) To efficiently explore the solution space, an explorative reinforcement learning system is established to estimate the explorative potential values of subspaces. Accordingly, algorithms are guided to explore subspaces with higher explorative potential values, promoting the discovery of unexploited promising basins of attraction. The framework is implemented into three conventional evolutionary algorithms, and the mechanism and effectiveness of the implemented algorithms are investigated by comprehensive experimental studies. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithms have competitive performances over the other twelve popular evolutionary algorithms. dc.description: The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.
  • Robust online active learning with cluster-based local drift detection for unbalanced imperfect data
    dc.title: Robust online active learning with cluster-based local drift detection for unbalanced imperfect data dc.contributor.author: Guo, Yinan; Zheng, Zhiji; Pu, Jiayang; Jiao, Botao; Gong, Dunwei; Yang, Shengxiang dc.description.abstract: With the rapid development of data-driven technologies, a massive amount of actual data emerges from industrial systems, forming data stream. Their data distribution may change over time and outliers may be generated as unbalanced imperfect data due to time-varying working condition, aging equipment, etc. Previous methods struggle with the dual challenges of concept drift and unbalance, however, fail to efficiently distinguishing outliers from a drift under the limited labeling budget, causing the performance degradation. To address the issue, robust online active learning with cluster-based local drift detection is proposed to classify unbalanced imperfect data stream with the above characteristics. The cluster-based local drift detection is first designed to capture a new concept and recognize the corresponding drifted regions. Following that, an improved active learning mechanism is presented to distinguish outliers from a drift, and select most valuable instances for labeling and updating ensemble classifier. Experimental results for eight synthetic and four real-world data streams show that the proposed method outperforms seven comparative methods on classification accuracy and robustness. dc.description: The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.
  • The IGD-based prediction strategy for dynamic multi-objective optimization
    dc.title: The IGD-based prediction strategy for dynamic multi-objective optimization dc.contributor.author: Hu, Yaru; Peng, Jiankang; Ou, Junwei; Li, Yana; Zheng, Jinhua; Zou, Juan; Jiang, Shouyong; Yang, Shengxiang; Li, Jun dc.description.abstract: In recent years, an increasing number of prediction-based strategies have shown promising results in handling dynamic multi-objective optimization problems (DMOPs), and prediction mod els are also considered to be very favorable. Nevertheless, some linear prediction models may not always be effective. In particular, when the motion direction trends of different individuals are not aligned, these models can yield inaccurate prediction results. Inverted generational distance (IGD) is a commonly used metric for evaluating the performance of algorithms. This paper proposes a prediction model based on the IGD metric. Specifically, we assume that the pareto optimal front (POF) of the population at the previous time step is the true POF, and the POF at the current time step is the approximate POF. We cluster the current population with reference to the euclidean distances from uniform points on the true POF to the current POF points, with slight overlap between adjacent clusters, enables a better tradeoff between convergence and diversity in the prediction process. We consider the movement directions of individuals within each cluster separately through different cluster distributions, while balancing the individual movement directions and the overall population movement direction by overlaying cluster coverage areas, thereby helping to avoid the clustered prediction population from getting trapped in local op tima. Experimental results and comparisons with other algorithms demonstrate that this strategy exhibits strong competitiveness in handling DMOPs.
  • Particle search control network for dynamic optimization
    dc.title: Particle search control network for dynamic optimization dc.contributor.author: Song, Wei; Liu, Zhi; Liu, Shaocong; Ding, Xiaofeng; Guo, Yinan; Yang, Shengxiang dc.description.abstract: In dynamic optimization problems (DOPs), environmental changes can be characterized as various dynamics. Faced with different dynamics, existing dynamic optimization algorithms (DOAs) are difficult to tackle, because they are incapable of learning in each environment to control the search. Besides, diversity loss is a critical issue in solving DOPs. Maintaining a high diversity over dynamic environments is reasonable as it can address such an issue automatically. In this paper we propose a particle search control network (PSCN) to maintain a high diversity over time and control two key search actions of each input individual, i.e., locating the local learning target and adjusting the local acceleration coefficient. Specifically, PSCN adequately considers the diversity to generate subpopulations located by hidden node centers, where each center is assessed by significance-based criteria and distance-based criteria. The former enable a small intra-subpopulation distance and a big search scope (subpopulation width) for each subpopulation, while the latter make each center distant from other existing centers. In each subpopulation, the best found position is selected as the local learning target. In the output layer, PSCN determines the action of adjusting the local acceleration coefficient of each individual. Reinforcement learning is introduced to obtain the desired output of PSCN, enabling the network to control the search by learning in different iterations of each environment. The experimental results especially performance comparisons with eight state-of-the-art DOAs demonstrate that PSCN brings significant improvements in performance of solving DOPs.
  • A dynamic preference-driven evolutionary algorithm for solving dynamic multi-objective problems
    dc.title: A dynamic preference-driven evolutionary algorithm for solving dynamic multi-objective problems dc.contributor.author: Wang, Xueqing; Zheng, Jinhua; Zou, Juan; Hou, Zhanglu; Liu, Yuan; Yang, Shengxiang dc.description.abstract: Considering the decision-maker's preference information in static multi-objective optimization problems (MOPs) has been extensively studied. However, incorporating dynamic preference information into dynamic MOPs is a relatively less explored area. This paper introduces a preference information-driven DMOEA and proposes a preference-based prediction method. Specifically, a preference-based inverse model is designed to respond to the time-varying preference information, and the model is used to predict an initial population for tracking the changing ROI. Furthermore, a hybrid prediction strategy, that combines a linear prediction model and estimation of population manifolds in the ROI, is proposed to ensure convergence and distribution of population when the preference remain constant. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm has significant advantages over existing representative DMOEAs through experimental tests on 19 common test problems. dc.description: Free access article
  • Multi-region trend prediction strategy with online sequential extreme learning machine for dynamic multi-objective optimization
    dc.title: Multi-region trend prediction strategy with online sequential extreme learning machine for dynamic multi-objective optimization dc.contributor.author: Song, Wei; Liu, Shaocong; Yu, Hongbin; Guo, Yinan; Yang, Shengxiang dc.description.abstract: Dynamic multi-objective optimization problems (DMOPs) involve multiple conflicting and time-varying objectives, requiring dynamic multi-objective algorithms (DMOAs) to track changing Pareto-optimal fronts. In recent decade, prediction-based DMOAs have shown promise in handling DMOPs. However, in existing prediction-based DMOAs some specific solutions in a small number of prior environments are generally used. Consequently, it is difficult for these DMOAs to capture Pareto-optimal set (POS) changes accurately. Besides, gaps may exist in some objective subspaces due to uneven population distribution, causing a difficulty in searching these subspaces. Faced with such difficulties, this article proposes a multi-region trend prediction strategy-based dynamic multi-objective evolutionary algorithm (MTPS-DMOEA) to handle DMOPs. MTPS-DMOEA divides the objective space into multiple subspaces and predicts POS moving trends through the use of POS center points from multiple objective subspaces, which contributes to accurately capturing POS changes. In MTPS-DMOEA, the parameters of the prediction model are continuously updated via online sequential extreme learning machine, facilitating the adequate utilization of useful information in historical environments and hence the enhancement of the generalization performance for the prediction. To fill gaps in some objective subspaces, MTPS-DMOEA introduces diverse solutions generated from the previous POS in adjacent subspaces. We compare the proposed MTPS-DMOEA with six state-of-the-art DMOAs on fourteen benchmark test problems, and the experimental results demonstrate the excellent performance of MTPS-DMOEA in handling DMOPs. dc.description: The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.
  • A dynamic multi-objective evolutionary algorithm based on Niche prediction strategy
    dc.title: A dynamic multi-objective evolutionary algorithm based on Niche prediction strategy dc.contributor.author: Zheng, Jinhua; Zhang, Bo; Zou, Juan; Yang, Shengxiang; Hu, Yaru dc.description.abstract: In reality, many multi-objective optimization problems are dynamic. The Pareto optimal front (PF) or Pareto optimal solution (PS) of these dynamic multi-objective problems (DMOPs) changes as the environment change. Therefore, solving such problems requires an optimization algorithm that can quickly track the PF or PS after an environment change. Prediction-based response mechanism is a common method used to deal with environmental changes, which is commonly known as center point-based prediction. However, if the predicted direction of the center point is inaccurate, the predicted population will be biased towards one side. In this paper, we propose a niche prediction strategy based on center and boundary points (PCPB) to solve the dynamic multi-objective optimization problems, which consists of three steps. After environmental changes are detected, the first step is to divide the niche, dividing different individuals in the PS into different niche populations. The second step is to independently predict different niches, and select individuals with good convergence and distribution in the niche to predict the individuals that will produce the next generation. Finally, some different individuals are randomly generated in the next possible PS area to ensure the diversity of the population. To verify whether our proposed strategy is effective and competitive, PCPB was compared with five state-of-the-art strategies. The experimental results show that PCPB performed competitively in solving dynamic multi-objective optimization problems, which proves that our algorithm has good competitiveness.
  • Evolutionary multi/many-objective optimisation via bilevel decomposition
    dc.title: Evolutionary multi/many-objective optimisation via bilevel decomposition dc.contributor.author: Jiang, Shouyong; Guo, Jinglei; Wang, Yong; Yang, Shengxiang dc.description.abstract: Decomposition of a complex multi-objective optimisation problem (MOP) to multiple simple subMOPs, known as M2M for short, is an effective approach to multi-objective optimisation. However, M2M facilitates little communication/collaboration between subMOPs, which limits its use in complex optimisation scenarios. This paper extends the M2M framework to develop a unified algorithm for both multi-objective and many-objective optimisation. Through bilevel decomposition, an MOP is divided into multiple subMOPs at upper level, each of which is further divided into a number of single-objective subproblems at lower level. Neighbouring subMOPs are allowed to share some subproblems so that the knowledge gained from solving one subMOP can be transferred to another, and eventually to all the subMOPs. The bilevel decomposition is readily combined with some new mating selection and population update strategies, leading to a high-performance algorithm that competes effectively against a number of state-of-the-arts studied in this paper for both multi- and many-objective optimisation. Parameter analysis and component analysis have been also carried out to further justify the proposed algorithm.

Click here to view a full listing of Shengxiang Yang's publications and outputs.

Research interests/expertise

  • Evolutionary Computation

  • Swarm Intelligence

  • Meta-heuristics

  • Dynamic Optimisation Problems

  • Multi-objective Optimisation Problems

  • Relevant Real-World Applications

Areas of teaching

Research Methods for Intelligent Systems and Robotics MSc, Software Engineering MSc, Computing MSc, and Business Intelligence Systems and Data Mining MSc Degrees.

Qualifications

BSc in Automatic Control, Northeastern University, China (1993)

MSc in Automatic Control, Northeastern University, China (1996)

PhD in Systems Engineering Northeastern University, China (1999)

Courses taught

I have taught numerous modules at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. Quite a number of modules I taught were significantly developed by myself. The modules I taught are usually designed to be practice-oriented with problem-solving lab sessions based on Java or C++ programming, and hence are highly interesting to and greatly useful for students. They are also very important for different degree programmes in Computer Science and relevant subjects. Some of the modules I have taught are listed as follows:

  • CS3002 Artificial Intelligence (2010 – 2012, Brunel University): 3rd year Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence) BSc module, module leader

  • CS2005 Networks and Operating Systems (2010 – 2012, Brunel University): 2nd year Network Computing BSc module, part module

  • CS5518 Business Integration (2011-2012, Brunel University): Business Systems Integration MSc module, part module

  • CO2017 Networks and Distributed Systems (2005–2010, University of Leicester): 2nd year Computer Science BSc module, module leader

  • CO2005 Object-Oriented Programming Using C++ (2006–2009, University of Leicester): 2nd year Computer Science BSc module, module leader

  • CO1003 Program Design (2006-2007, University of Leicester): 1st year Computer Science BSc module, module leader

  • CO3097 Programming Secure and Distributed Systems (2003–2005, University of Leicester): 3rd year Computer Science BSc & Advanced Computer Science MSc module, module leader

  • CO1017 Operating Systems and Networks (2001 – 2004, University of Leicester): 1st year Computer Science BSc module, module leader

  • CO1016 Computer Systems (2000 – 2002, University of Leicester): 1st year Computer Science BSc module, part module

I have also co-ordinated several BSc projects, as shown below.

  • CS3072/CS3074/CS3105/CS3109 BSc Final Year Projects (2010 – 2012, Brunel University): Co-ordination Team Member

  • CO3012/CO3013/CO3015 Computer Science BSc Final Year Projects (2004 – 2010, University of Leicester): Co-ordinator

  • CO3120 Computer Science with Management BSc Final Year Project (2007 – 2010, University of Leicester): Co-ordinator

  • CO3014 Mathematics and Computer Science BSc Final Year Project (2004 – 2010, University of Leicester): Co-ordinator

  • CO2015 Second Year BSc Software Engineering Project (2003 – 2004, University of Leicester): Co-ordinator

Honours and awards

  • Nominatee to the Best Paper Award for EvoApplications 2016: Applications of Evolutionary Computation, for the paper "Direct memory schemes for population-based incremental learning in cyclically changing environments" by Michalis Mavrovouniotis and Shengxiang Yang, published in EvoApplications 2016: Applications of Evolutionary Computation, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 9598, pp. 233-247, 2016.

  • Nominatee for the Best-Paper Award of the ACO-SI Track at the 2015 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, for the paper "An ant colony optimization based memetic algorithm for the dynamic travelling salesman problem" by Michalis Mavrovouniotis, Felipe Martins Muller and Shengxiang Yang, published in the Proceedings of the 17th Annual Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation, pp. 49-56, 2015.

  • Winner of the 2014 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation Best Student Paper Award, for the paper entitled "A test problem for visual investigation of high-dimensional multi-objective search" by Miqing Li, Shengxiang Yang and Xiaohui Liu, published in the Proceedings of the 2014 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, pp. 2140-2147, 2014.

  • Nominatee for the 2005 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference Best Paper Award, for the paper "Memory-based immigrants for genetic algorithms in dynamic environments" by Shengxiang Yang, published in the Proceedings of the 2005 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, Vol. 2, pp. 1115-1122, 2005.

  • Visiting Professor (2012 – 2014, 2016-2018), College of Information Engineering, Xiangtan University, China

  • Visiting Professor (2011 – 2017), College of Mathematics and Statistics, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, China

Membership of professional associations and societies

  • Founding Chair, Task Force on Intelligent Network Systems (TF-INS), Intelligent Systems Applications Technical Committee (ISATC), IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (IEEE CIS), 2012–2018.

  • Chair, Task Force on Evolutionary Computation in Dynamic and Uncertain Environments (ECiDUE), Evolutionary Computation Technical Committee (ECTC), IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (IEEE CIS), 2011–2018.

  • Senior Member, IEEE, since 2014.

  • Member, IEEE, 2000 – 2013.

  • Member, IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (IEEE CIS), since 2005.

  • Member, Evolutionary Computation Technical Committee (ECTC), IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (IEEE CIS), since 2011.

  • Member, Intelligent Systems Applications Technical Committee (ISATC), IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (IEEE CIS), since 2013.

  • Member, Task Force on Evolutionary Computation in Dynamic and Uncertain Environments (ECiDUE), Evolutionary Computation Technical Committee (ECTC), IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (IEEE CIS), 2003 – 2010.

Current research students

First Supervisor:

  • Muhanad Tahrir Younis: Swarm intelligence for dynamic job scheduling in grid computing, started from October 2014

  • Conor Fahy: Evolutionary computation for data stream analysis, started from October 2015

  • Zedong Zheng: started from October 2016
  • Matthew Fox: started from October 2017

Second Supervisor:

  • Ahad Arshad: PhD candidate, co-supervised with Prof. Paul Fleming at De Montfort University, started in October 2017.

  • William Lawrence: PhD candidate, co-supervised with Dr. Mario Gongora at De Montfort University, started in April 2012

Complete PhD Students (I was the 1st Supervisor):

  • Changhe Li: Particle swarm optimisation in stationary and dynamic environments, 2011

  • Imtiaz Ali Korejo: Adaptive mutation operators for evolutionary algorithms, 2011

  • Sadaf Naseem Jat: Genetic algorithms for university course timetabling problems, 2012

  • Shakeel Arshad: Sequence based memetic algorithms for static and dynamic travelling salesman problems, 2012

  • Michalis Mavrovouniotis: Ant Colony Optimization in Stationary and Dynamic Environments, 2013

  •  Miqing Li: Evolutionary Many-Objective Optimization: Pushing the Boundaries, 2015
  • Jayne Eaton: Ant Colony Optimisation for Dynamic and Dynamic Multi-objective Railway Rescheduling Problems, 2017
  • Shouyong Jiang: Evolutionary Algorithms for Static and Dynamic Multiobjective Optimization, 2017

Externally funded research grants information

  • EU Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (PI, Project ID: 661327, 09/2015-08/2017, €195,455): Evolutionary Computation for Dynamic Constrained Optimization Problems (ECDCOP)

  • EPSRC (PI, Standard Research Project, EP/K001310/1, 18/2/2013-17/02/2017, £445,069): Evolutionary Computation for Dynamic Optimisation in Network Environments

  • EPSRC (PI, Standard Research Project, EP/E060722/1 and EP/E060722/2, 1/1/2008-1/7/2011, £307,469): Evolutionary Algorithms for Dynamic Optimisation Problems: Design, Analysis and Applications

  • EPSRC (PI, Overseas Travel Grants GR/S79718/01, 1/11/2003-31/1/2004, £6,700): Adaptive and Hybrid Genetic Algorithms for Production Scheduling Problems in Manufacturing. This grant supported my research visit to Waseda University, Japan, during my Sabbatical leave period. Additionally, Waseda University, Japan contributed JPY140,000 (~£800) toward the visit

  • State Key Laboratory of Synthetical Automation of Process Industry, Northeastern University, China (PI, Open Research Project, 1/1/2012-31/12/2013, CNY300,000 (~£30,000)): Evolutionary Computation for Dynamic Scheduling Problems in Process Industries

  • State Key Laboratory of Synthetical Automation of Process Industry, Northeastern University, China (PI, Open Research Project, 1/1/2010-31/12/2011, CNY150,000 (~£15,000)): Evolutionary Computation for Dynamic Optimization and Scheduling Problems

  • Transport iNet, European Regional Development Fund (Co-I, 11/11/2013 - 28/02/2015, £62,134), Evolutionary Computation for Optimised Rail Travel (EsCORT). This is a linked project between De Montfort University and Go Travel Solutions, a Leicester based SME specialising in assisting businesses to develop sustainable travel solutions, covering people and goods.

  • Hong Kong Polytechnic University Research Grants (Co-I, Grant G-YH60, 1/7/2009-30/6/2010, HKD120,000 (~£10,000)): Improved Evolutionary Algorithms with Primal-Dual Population for Dynamic Variation in Production Systems. Partners:

In addition, I have also received several conference travel grants from UK Research Councils, e.g., Royal Society Conference Travel Grant (£700 in 2007 and £719 in 2005) and Royal Academy of Engineering Conference Grant (£800 in 2007 and £1,200 in 2006).

Internally funded research project information

  • De Montfort University Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) 2017-18 (Co-I, 01/12/2017-31/07/2018, £14,000): Brian-Computer-Interface Prototyping System: Data-based Filtering and Dynamic Characterisation.

  • De Montfort University Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) 2015-16 (PI, 01/01/2016-31/07/2016, £24,800): Development of a Dynamic Resource Scheduling Prototype System for Airports.

  • De Montfort University PhD Studentships 2017-18 (PI, 1/10/2017–30/09/2020, approximately £60,000): supporting stipend and fees for one EU/Home PhD student for three years

  • De Montfort University Fee Waiver PhD Scholarships 2016-17 (PI, 1/10/2016–30/09/2019, approximately £40,000): supporting fees for one overseas PhD student for three years

  • De Montfort University PhD Studentships 2015-16 (PI, 1/10/2015–30/09/2018, approximately £60,000): supporting stipend and fees for one EU/Home PhD student for three years

  • De Montfort University PhD Studentships 2013-14 (PI, 1/10/2013–30/09/2016, approximately £80,000): supporting stipend and fees for one overseas PhD student for three years

  • De Montfort University PhD Studentships 2013-14 (PI, 1/4/2013–31/03/2016, approximately £60,000): supporting stipend and fees for one home PhD student for three years

  • Brunel University PhD Studentships 2011-12 (PI, 01/10/2011–30/09/2014, approximately £80,000): supporting stipend and fees for one overseas PhD student for three years

  • University of Leicester PhD Studentships 2008-09 (PI, 1/10/2008–30/9/2011, approximately £50,000): supporting stipend and fees for one PhD student for three years

  • University of Leicester Research Fund 2001 (PI, 1/1/2001- 31/12/2001, £3,200): Using Neural Network and Genetic Algorithm Methods for Job-Shop Scheduling Problem.

Professional esteem indicators

Shengxiang-Yang