SPECIAL SESSION | COMPUTER INTELLIGENCE FOR ECONOMICS AND FINANCE
Special Session Chairs Okan Duru, USA Bionote Matthew Butler, USA Bionote CONFERENCE HOME Conference Chairs Kay Chen Tan, Singapore Gary G. Yen, USA Special Sessions Chairs Uzay Kaymak, Netherlands Mengjie Zhang, New Zealand Zhi-Hua Zhou, China Chuan-Kang Ting	IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence 2016 (IEEE WCCI 2016), the largest international conference in the field, will be held in Vancouver, Canada, 25th-29th July 2016. IEEE WCCI 2016 will be hosting three separate prestigious conferences, The 2016 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN 2016), the 2016 IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ-IEEE 2016), and the 2016 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (IEEE CEC 2016). It covers all topics in computational intelligence by utilizing neural networks, fuzzy logic and evolutionary computation techniques. In the last few decades, there is a growing interest on utilizing computer intelligence to economic and financial problems. The conventional methods in economics and finance have been exposed to strong criticism because of their limitations, fallacious outcome and the need for several assumptions. By the existing financial crisis, econometrics and several financial assessment instruments are blamed for causing illusory results. In such a context, computer intelligence is able to find solutions with less limitations and more flexibility. Rather than traditional analysis, computer intelligence can discard most part of noise and uncertainty in real data and discover connections among inputs and outputs. Most of neural functions in human brain is based on pattern recognition, and computer aided algorithms are good at recognizing patterns in non-linear environment of real life. Both Fuzzy Logic and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) approaches can handle various economic and financial problems. The following two special sessions are dedicated for the use of computer intelligence in economic and financial problems as well as discussions on merging economic and financial theory with computer aid. Okan Duru Assistant Professor, Texas A&M University at Galveston 200 Seawolf Parkway, Galveston TX, USA Matthew Butler Research Scientist Amazon Corporate LLC Seattle WA, USA ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ Cross-disciplinary and Computational Intelligence Applications Computer Intelligence for Economics and Finance SCOPE AND TOPICS This session is particularly organized for gathering scholars on Computer Intelligence research, Fuzzy Logic, Artificial Neural Networks and their applications with a special emphasis on economic and financial problems. The scope of this session includes but not limited to: Economic and financial decision making under uncertainty Financial Management Time Series Analysis Artificial Immune Systems Forecasting (Short-term, Long range) Stock Market Analysis and Stock Pricing Risk Management Credit Risk Assessment Commodity Markets Pattern Recognition Algorithms Pricing and Valuation of Assets Trading Systems Portfolio Management Algorithmic Trading Plasticity of Artificial Systems in Economics and Finance Low frequency/high severity event modelling Big Data Problem · Paper submission deadline is on January 15, 2016. · All papers must be submitted through the Online Submission System (To be opened soon). · In order for your papers to be included in the congress program and the proceedings, final accepted papers must be submitted and the corresponding registration fees must be paid by April 15, 2016. · For details on submissions, please visit the conference website. ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ Bionotes of Special Session Chairs Okan Duru Assistant Professor, Texas A&M University at Galveston Dr. Duru is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Maritime Administration, Texas A&M University at Galveston and received his Ph.D. from Kobe University, Japan on the Economic analysis on the long term assessment of dry bulk shipping. His research interests are in fuzzy time series, forecasting, judgment and decision making and computer intelligence for financial decision making. In 2012, he received the outstanding young researcher award (EAGLE Prize) from the International Association of Maritime Economists. He has published many journal papers and conference papers as well as editing journal issues. He reviewed several papers for Fuzzy Sets and Systems, Applied Soft Computing, International Journal of Forecasting, Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of the Operational Research Society-JORS, International Journal of Fuzzy Systems, among others. Matthew Butler Amazon Corporation LLC Dr. Butler is a Research Scientist at Amazon Corporation LLC, Seattle, USA. He grew up in Bedford, Nova Scotia, Canada and attended Dalhousie University for his undergraduate degree in Finance. After finishing his degree he embarked on a two year trip where he lived and worked in Scotland and Australia. He was living in Edinburgh Scotland for 1.5 years where he worked for HSBC in their personal banking division. From there it was on to Sydney Australia to work for the Hubb Financial Group a developer for trading and investment analysis software. This was his first introduction to computer programming and the inspiration for his research in Machine Learning. He completed Masters of Electronic Commerce at Dalhousie University in 2009 and his thesis title was “An Artificial Intelligence Approach to Financial Forecasting using Improved Data Representation, Multi-objective Optimization, and Text Mining”. He completed his PhD degree at the University of York in York England where his research was with the Artificial Intelligence Group and focused on Financial Modeling with the aid of artificial intelligence techniques. His PhD research titled “Financial Forecasting with Artificial Intelligence” received K.M. Stott Prize for Computer Science from University of York. Dr. Butler also received Best Student Paper Award at IEEE Computational Intelligence for Financial Engineering and Economics (CIFEr) 2012, New York.
		The IEEE WCCI 2016 logo, with the three colored swirls, symbolizes the tradition of bringing the three prestigious conferences of IJCNN, FUZZ-IEEE and IEEE-CEC under a single umbrella every even year. The globe in the center invites researchers from all over the world to attend and unite for the single cause of sharing knowledge and advancing the computational intelligence field.
	2016 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence is financially sponsored by the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society.