IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine - August 2022 - 7

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Interview With Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on
Neural Networks and Learning Systems
The Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions
on Neural Networks and
Learning Systems (TNNLS), Prof.
Yongduan Song, talks about this reputable
publication, his life and favorites.
1. What events in your life most
likely placed you on the path that
led you to where you are today?
There are too many such events (big or
small) in my life to recall, but what I
would like to share here is my viewpoint
on success.
I believe different people would have
different opinions about success. To me,
any progress is success. There is but one
secret to success-never give up and
nothing is impossible to a willing heart.
Dr. Marie Curie used to say, " We must
have the perseverance and, above all,
confidence in ourselves. "
Enthusiasm and persistence for scientific
research are the key to success for
everyone during his/her career development.
Failures are inevitable and full of
the life, for instance, paper and proposal
rejections are not uncommon in pursuit
of professionalism. The key is to learn
from mistakes and gain from failures. As
we all know, " failure is the mother of
success. " In fact, when doing the same
thing, some people succeed but some
fail. Failure is not fearful; the important
thing is how to face it correctly. Facing
failure, people should never take their
fate lying down but try their best to
work harder and harder until at last they
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCI.2022.3180881
Date of current version: 19 July 2022
Yongduan Song on the meeting
succeed. In addition, confidence is just
the door to success. If someone wants
to get into the house of success, determination
is necessary. If someone is
not determined, he would give up
when facing difficulty. Young members
should enjoy the process of constant
trial and modification.
The important thing in doing
research is to have a clear goal and the
determination to attain it. There is a
famous motto saying that there are no
two identical people in the world, but
successful people are similar in many
ways. Success should also rely on such
factors as diligence, confidence, perseverance.
They are the key to help us to
open the door of success and the
foundation and condition of success.
There is no denying that diligence is
the first step to the success. As the
proverb says, " no pains, no gains " .
Many scholars become successful by
their diligence, which should be taken
as a good habit.
I am fortunate to have the opportunity
to study and conduct research in
several well-known universities and
national laboratories in China, Australia
and the United States, collaborating
with renowned scholars and research
teams, close interactions with many top
research scientists and groups. What
benefited me the most is my research
stay at home and aboard, the excellence
of the people around me brought me
both pressure and motivation. I am
grateful for the experience of working
with many successful and excellent
scholars who taught me the attitude and
spirit of research.
2. Can you tell us a little bit about
your research work that brought
you to this appointment?
One of my research directions lies in
exploring the functionality and reliability
of neural networks (NNs) when
connected in the loop of control systems.
Several interesting results have
been obtained along this topic. For
instance, motivated by the practical
biological traits, we proposed a novel
strategy that allows the NN to evolve
with time varying rather than constant
ideal weights. To tackle the difficulty
arising from the varying and unknown
nature of the ideal weights, we proposed
to update the upper norm of the
unknown weights, instead of the
weights themselves. To deal with the
situation that on one hand the function
to be approximated by NN must be
continuous over the operation region
and, on the other hand, the function
might involve discontinuity due to
AUGUST 2022 | IEEE COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE MAGAZINE 7
IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine - August 2022

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