IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine - May 2021 - 3

President's
Message

Bernadette Bouchon-Meunier
CNRS-Sorbonne Université,
FRANCE

How to Deal With Uncertainty?

e have spent more than a year in an uncertain world.
Even though we are among the specialists in the management of uncertainty, everything is difficult. We had to
incessantly improvise because the health situation is constantly
evolving and we face a complex environment where the progress of
COVID-19 leads to administrative decisions at all levels, affecting
our personal lives and our professional practices and habits. Improvisation in the face of unprecedented situations is certainly natural to human beings
and one of the tasks that artificial beings are not yet able to accomplish, as is creativity.
To make a decision, we can always learn from previous examples, if there exist any,
even if we have only sparse examples. We can also consider the similarity of the current situation with previous cases. But what happens if we have never encountered a
situation resembling the present one? Human beings improvise. What can artificial
beings do? Statisticians have played their part in anticipating the progress of the pandemic, but the appearance of a new dangerous mutation of the virus in a country is
for example possible, as reality has proven, but not statistically predictable.
Curiously, this thought brings us to Lotfi A. Zadeh, who was a specialist of automated systems, and promoted systems that tend to reason like humans.The possibility theory he introduced is an attempt to fill the gap when statistics and probabilities are not
sufficient to solve real-world problems in an overly complex environment. The flexibility of fuzzy systems he invented is certainly an effective element for their adaptability.
Lotfi A. Zadeh was born on February 4, 1921 and the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society and the International Fuzzy Systems Association (IFSA) decided to
jointly celebrate the centenary of his birth, to pay tribute to him as a creator and a
visionary, as well as to recognize his human qualities. He was an active member of our
societies and we invite all his friends to submit testimonials to the IEEE Collabratec
conversation site and to watch the videos collected in the History Section of the
IEEE CIS website.
At the time of this writing, the form of the 2021 IEEE CIS conferences is uncertain. We look forward to seeing you all in person as soon as possible. We will anyway
use virtual solutions whenever this will not be possible. The IEEE CIS committees
remain very active and we invite all CIS chapters to take advantage of the financial
support available for quality activities. We are also eager to get in touch with all those
working in industrial and governmental sectors who are interested in participating in
CIS conferences and technical activities.
Before concluding, I am pleased to tell you that the IEEE CIS is still very committed to diversity, in terms of gender, level of expertise, region and areas of work. Its
Administrative Committee decided to support the IEEE Women in Engineering pledge
to work towards gender-diversified panels at all IEEE meetings, conferences, and events.
Let us hope for a bright future! You can always contact me at b.bouchon-meunier@
ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCI.2021.3061850
Date of current version: 12 April 2021

CIS Society Officers
President - Bernadette Bouchon-Meunier,
Sorbonne Université, FRANCE
President Elect - Jim Keller, University of
Missouri, USA
Vice President - Conferences - Marley M. B. R.
Vellasco, Pontifical Catholic University of
Rio de Janeiro, BRAZIL
Vice President - Education - Pau-Choo (Julia)
Chung, National Cheng Kung University,TAIWAN
Vice President - Finances - Pablo A. Estévez,
University of Chile, CHILE
Vice President - Members Activities - Sanaz
Mostaghim, Otto von Guericke University of
Magdeburg, GERMANY
Vice President - Publications - Kay Chen Tan,
Hong Kong Polytechnic University, HONG KONG
Vice President - Technical Activities -
Luis Magdalena, Universidad Politecnica
de Madrid, SPAIN
Publication Editors
IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks
and Learning Systems
Haibo He, University of Rhode Island, USA
IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems
Jon Garibaldi, University of Nottingham, UK
IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation
Carlos A. Coello Coello, CINVESTAV-IPN,
MEXICO
IEEE Transactions on Games
Julian Togelius, New York University, USA
IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and
Developmental Systems
Yaochu Jin, University of Surrey, UK
IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in
Computational Intelligence
Yew Soon Ong, Nanyang Technological University,
SINGAPORE
IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence
Hussein Abbass, University of New South Wales,
AUSTRALIA
Administrative Committee
Term ending in 2021:
David Fogel, Natural Selection, Inc., USA
Barbara Hammer, Bielefeld University,
GERMANY
Yonghong (Catherine) Huang,
McAfee LLC, USA
Xin Yao, Southern University of Science
and Technology, CHINA
Jacek M. Zurada, University of Louisville, USA
Term ending in 2022:
Cesare Alippi, Politecnico di Milano, ITALY
James C. Bezdek, USA
Gary Fogel, Natural Selection, Inc., USA
Yaochu Jin, University of Surrey, UK
Alice E. Smith, Auburn University, USA
Term ending in 2023:
Piero P. Bonissone, Piero P Bonissone Analytics
LLC, USA
Oscar Cordón, University of Granada, SPAIN
Pauline Haddow, Norwegian University of Science
and Technology, NORWAY
Haibo He, University of Rhode Island, USA
Hisao Ishibuchi, Southern University of Science
and Technology, CHINA
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCI.2021.3056257

MAY 2021 | IEEE COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE MAGAZINE

IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine - May 2021

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