Dr Dongling Xu is a professor in the Decision and Cognitive Sciences Research Centre (www.mbs.ac.uk/dcs), Manchester Business School, the University of Manchester. She has published over 150 papers with many in peer reviewed highly regarded international journals. Her current research interests are in the areas of decision making and decision support under uncertainty, and their applications in risk analysis, consumer preference identification, supplier selection, environmental impact assessment, and sustainability management. She developed several statistical pipeline leak detection systems for companies such as CNOOC, Shell and BP. She has also developed several decision support tools including IDS (Intelligent Decision System www.e-ids.co.uk)which is used by researchers and practitioners from over 50 countries.

Professor Wu graduated, with an MEng degree in Electrical Power System and its Automation, from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China, in 1981. After graduation, he worked as a Lecturer in the University for three years before I started his PhD research in the UK in 1984. He obtained a PhD degree in Electrical Power Engineering from The Queens University of Belfast in 1987. Professor Wu is now a Chair Professor working in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics, The University of Liverpool, UK and the Director of e-Automation Laboratory, which was the first flagship Laboratory in this area, jointly funded by National Instruments and National Grid in 2003. He was the first Chinese scholar, from the mainland of China, appointed to a Chair Professor in the UK, after China undertook the open door policy in 1978. His career includes an experimental officer in a power system physical simulation laboratory before his higher education, university lecturer in Electrical Engineering in one of the top Chinese universities, postdoctoral research fellow and senior research fellow in Electrical Engineering, university lecturer and senior lecturer in Mathematics, and chair professor in Electrical Engineering in the UK. His work remains unique in its interdisciplinary nature within the power systems community.

Professor Wu’s research interests include Power System Operation and Control, Energy Systems, utilisation of Renewable Energies, Adaptive Control, Computational Intelligence, Reinforcement Learning, Machine Learning, Non-linear System Control, Mathematical Morphology, Multi-agent Systems, System-on-Chip technology. Based on the work undertaken over the past 30 years, he has authored/co-authored more than 400 technical papers including 180 journal papers, 3 research monographs, 20 book chapters and 220 refereed conference papers. Most of them are published in the high-quality journals and presented in the first-class conferences. He has registered 3 patents. He has supervised 45 PhD students, 16 postdoctoral research assistants and 25 academic visitors. He has also given more than 60 invited talks in higher education institutions, industrial companies and international conferences. He has received the following awards: National Semiconductor Advanced Technology Award, National Semiconductor Corporation, USA, 1986; Remuneration Award to an exceptional merit and performance, Science and Engineering Research Council, U.K., 1991; Donald Julius Groen Prize for the best paper published in Journal of Systems and Control Engineering, Institution of Mechanical Engineers, 1994.

Professor Wu is a Fellow of IEEE, Fellow of IEE, Fellow of InstMC and Royal Chartered Engineer. He has served as a committee member of IEE professional groups, London and on the committees of a number of international conferences. 

He has undertaken and managed a large number of research projects, sponsored by EPSRC, British Council, The Royal Society, National Grid plc, National Power, ALSTOM, National Instruments, Siemens and other industrial companies. He is the Abroad Assessment Expert of the Chinese Academy of Science; Reviewer of China Science and technology Awards; Guangbiao Professor of Zhejiang University; Member of Consultant Committee of the State Energy Smart Grid R&D Shanghai Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University; China State Qianren Professor, Director of Energy Research Institute, South China University of Technology; Visiting and Consultant Professor of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China Electrical Power Research Institute and many other universities.

Jianbo Yang is Professor of Decision and System Sciences, Head of the Decision and Cognitive Sciences (DCS) Subject Area Group, and Director of the DCS Research Centre at the Manchester Business School of The University of Manchester, U.K. He is also a Specially Appointed Changjian Chair Professor at the School of Management of Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, China. In the past three decades, he has been conducting research in evidential reasoning theory, multiple criteria decision analysis under uncertainty, multiple objective optimization, intelligent decision support systems, hybrid quantitative and qualitative decision modeling using techniques from operational research, artificial intelligence and systems engineering, system modeling, simulation and control for engineering and management systems. His current applied research is in design decision-making, risk and security modelling and analysis, quality modeling and evaluation, supply chain modeling and supplier assessment, and the integrated evaluation of products, systems, projects, policies, etc. His current research has been supported by EPSRC, EC, DEFRA, SERC, HKRGC, NSFC and industry. He has published 4 books, over 170 journal papers and book chapters, and a similar number of conference papers, and developed several software packages including the Windows-based intelligent decision system (IDS) via evidential reasoning.

Jikyeong Kang is currently professor of marketing and director of the DBA Programme at Manchester Business School (MBS), United Kingdom. A native of Korea, she spent eighteen years in the United States, of which nine were on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. During the early years of her career at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, she was elected as a member of the prestigious Teaching Academy. She has also held visiting appointments at many leading business schools, including IE (Madrid), CEIBS (Shanghai), RSM (Rotterdam), HEC (Montreal), ESSEC (Paris), and Sogang (Seoul) University.

Jikyeong was director of MBA Programmes at MBS, providing strategic leadership for a suite of MBA programs. During the six years of her tenure, the MBS full-time MBA program ranking went up from forty-eighth (2002) to twenty-second (2007) in the world, according to the Financial Times ranking reports.

Jikyeong is a recipient of various research grants and has done consultancy work for many international organizations, including Adelphi International, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Hilti, Littlewoods, and Sears. She has also received several national and international awards for her research and actively publishes her work in various academic research journals. In addition, she has presented numerous papers at industry and academic conferences throughout the United States and Europe. In 2005, she was highly commended in the Public Sector for Asian Women of Achievement Award in the UK.

Professor Hong received his PhD in Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences from Northwestern University in 2004, MSc in Applied Mathematics from the University of Cincinnati in 2001, and BEng in Automative Engineering and BEng in Industrial Engineering from Tsinghua University in 1999. Prior to joining the City University of Hong Kong, he was Professor and Director of Financial Engineering Laboratory in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Logistics Management at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Professor Hong’s research interests include management sciences, operations research, financial engineering and risk management, and financial analytics. He published extensively on leading academic journals such as Management Science, Operations Research and INFORMS Journal on Computing. He was the winner of the 2009 Operations Best Paper Award from the Institute of Industrial Engineers and the 2012 Outstand Simulation Publication Award from the INFORMS Simulation Society. He is currently an Associate Editor of Operations Research, Naval Research Logistics and ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation.

Li Jin currently serves as Chair Professor of Finance at Guanghua School of Management in Peking University and Professor of Finance (with tenure) at Oxford University Saïd Business School. Before he joined Guanghua, Li Jin taught at the Harvard Business School from 2001 to 2012. In the past he has taught Investment and Finance in Emerging Markets, International Financial Management in the second year MBA program and the required finance courses in the first year MBA program. His primary research interest is in empirical corporate finance and empirical asset pricing. His current researches study emerging financial markets. He has also studied empirical corporate finance, empirical asset pricing, compensations of corporate managers, the trading patterns of institutional investors such as hedge funds, mutual funds and pension funds, and the comparison of securities markets across countries.

Li Jin has published articles at leading academic journals including Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, and Journal of Accounting And Economics, etc. He has earned rewards such as FAME Research Prize, PanAgora Quantitative Research Award, and Best Paper Award in TCFA Conference, Financial Management Association European Conference, and Global Financial Association Annual Conference, etc.

Li Jin received his Ph.D. in finance from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 2001, and a bachelor's degree in economics from Fudan University in 1992. Before entering graduate school, he was a full time faculty member at Fudan University, Department of International Finance.

Li Jin currently serves as the Co-Chair of the Finance Department and Assistant Dean for faculty recruiting at Guanghua School of Management.