Jacek Blazewicz is professor of Computer Science at the Poznan University of Technology (Poland). He is IFORS Vice President for EURO, an IEEE Fellow, and co-laureate of the EURO Gold Medal, Copernicus Prize and several Awards of the Polish Ministry of Science. Klaus Ecker received his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from the University of Graz (Austria), and his habilitation in Computer Science from the University of Bonn (Germany). Since 1978 he is a professor at the Department of Computer Science of the Technical University of Clausthal (Germany), and from 2005 until 2009 he was visiting professor at the Ohio University (USA).  Erwin Pesch has Ph.D. in Mathematics and habilitation in Business Administration. He worked at universities in Darmstadt, Maastricht and Bonn. He is a professor at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration of the University in Siegen (Germany) and director of the Center for Advanced Studies in Management (CASiM) at the HHL LeipzigGraduate School of Management (Germany). Together with Jacek Błażewicz he received the Copernicus Prize in 2012 jointly awarded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Foundation for Polish Science (FNP). In 2017 he received the Science Award of the German Operations Research Society (GOR). Malgorzata Sterna is associate professor at the Faculty of Computing of the Poznan University of Technology (Poland), from which she received  Ph.D. and habilitation in Computer Science. She is a recipient of the stipend of the Foundation for Polish Science and the award of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Technical Sciences).  Günter Schmidt is professor of Operations Research and Business Informatics at the Computer Science Department and the Business School at Saarland University (Germany). He is member of Graduate School for Computer Science, researcher at Max Planck Institut Informatik and director of the Institute of Information and Communication Systems. He is also honorary professor at the University of Cape Town (South Africa). Jan Węglarz is professor of Computing at the Poznań University of Technology (Poland), and director of the Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Center. He is co-laureate of the EURO Gold Medal and a recipient of the Foundation for Polish Science Award.