Systems, Man & Cybernetics - July 2015 - 57

Meet Our Volunteers

M.E. El-Hawary

Prof. Herrera-Viedma
Elected to the SMCS
Board of Governors

rof. Enrique Herrera-Viedma
was born in the small village
of Jódar in the province of
Jaén, Spain, in 1969. He comes from
a humble farming family dedicated
to the cultivation of olives on a small
plot of land. He lost his father in 1979
when he was nine years old. Those
were difficult times. His mother was
not an expert in agriculture nor was
of Computer Science and Artificial
his only sister.
Intelligence at the University of
The loss of his father coincided
Granada in 1999, where he is preswith the end of Franco's dictatorently a professor as well as the vice
ship and the beginning of the Spanchancellor of research and innovation
ish democratic system. The Spanish
of the school's new governance team.
system of social care was not very
He has developed his scientific and
developed, and the social and ecoacademic activities in both the School
nomic structure of the country did
of Computer Science and Telecomnot allow a woman to find work easimunication and Faculty of Commuly. Therefore, his family lived with the
nication and Library Science at the
help of a minimum welfare pension
University of Granada.
for widows of the Spanish
Herrera-Viedma is the
state, about US$100/month.
leader of the UniverHis mother, Antonia, who
sity of Granada's mulread and wrote with great
tidisciplinary research
difficulty, gave her son one
laboratory SECABA,
of the best pieces of advice,
which is composed of
words that have guided
mathematicians, stathis academic and scientifisticians, librarians,
ic career: "Enrique, if you
Prof. Herrera-Viedma.
archivists, sociolowant to thrive, sink your
gists, social workers,
elbows on the table."
physiotherapists, computer engineers,
Herrera-Viedma studied in the
and telecommunications engineers.
Spanish public university system
He resides in Granada, a beautiful
with the help of the national system
city also called the "Alhambra city,"
of grants that the Spanish democratic
after one of the most famous historigovernment created in the 1980s. He
cal monuments in the world. He is
received his M.Sc. degree in computer
married to Maria Angeles Martínez
science from the University of GranaSánchez, who is a social work profesda in 1993. He joined the University of
sional and a professor in the Faculty
Granada in 1994 as a research fellow,
of Social Services and Social Work at
and, in 1996, he completed his Ph.D.
the University of Granada. They have
dissertation in fuzzy linguistic modtwo boys, Alvaro and Enrique, who
eling of group decision making. He
are 11 and 13 years old, respectively.
became a lecturer in the Department
His main hobbies are playing soccer
and chess and mountain biking.
He began his scientific career
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSMC.2015.2483037
conducting research about genetic
Date of publication: 4 March 2016

Ju ly 2015

algorithms under the supervision
of both Prof. Jose Luis Verdegay
and Prof. Francisco Herrera in the
Department of Computer Science
and Artificial Intelligence. In 1995,
his supervisors introduced him to
the fascinating world of fuzzy logic
and its applications. In particular, he
studied the foundations of the fuzzy
set theory and some of the fuzzy
decision-making models proposed by
Prof. Janusz Kacprzyk, Prof. Mario
Fedrizzi, and Prof. Hannu Nurmi,
as those soft consensus models for
group decision making.
Herrera-Viedma was also introduced to the management of linguistic variables proposed by Prof. Zadeh.
Then, he developed his doctoral dissertation on new fuzzy linguistic
decision-making models for group
decision making. He is most noted
in this area for his pioneering work
on new fuzzy linguistic methodologies to deal with linguistic information in decision-making problems
(fuzzy multigranular and unbalanced
linguistic models) and also on new
soft consensus models for achieving
agreement in group decision making.
Some of his scientific papers in this
area are highly cited (classified in the
top 1% of the most cited papers in the
computer science category according to the database Essential Science
Indicators provided by Thomson
Reuters, July 2015).
Herrera-Viedma began his teaching activity in the Faculty of Library
IEEE Systems, Man, & Cybernetics Magazine

http://www.M.Sc

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