Xiao-Zhi Gao received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from the Harbin Institute of Technology, China in 1993 and 1996, respectively. He obtained his D.Sc. (Tech.) degree from the Helsinki University of Technology (now Aalto University), Finland in 1999. He has been working as a professor at the University of Eastern Finland, Finland since 2018. Prof. Gao has published more than 400 technical papers in refereed journals and international conferences. His current Google Scholar H-index is 31. His research interests are nature-inspired computing methods with their applications in optimization, data mining, machine learning, control, signal processing, and industrial electronics.