Prof. Dr. M. Fernanda P. Costa is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and researcher at the Centre of Mathematics, University of Minho, Portugal. She received her PhD in Mathematics from the University of Minho in 2002. Her main areas of scientific activity are nonlinear programming, mixed-integer nonlinear programming, global optimization, multi-objective optimization, and machine learning techniques.
Luís L. Ferrás is currently affiliated with the Department of Mechanical Engineering, specifically within the Mathematics section, at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Portugal. He completed his undergraduate studies (five years) in mathematics at the University of Aveiro in 2005, followed by a master’s degree (two years) in applied mathematics at the Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto, in 2007. Subsequently, he earned a PhD in Science and Engineering of Polymers and Composites from the University of Minho in 2012 and a second PhD in Mathematics from the University of Chester (UK) in 2019. Throughout his career, he has held Post-Doctoral and Researcher positions at different institutions, including the Center of Mathematics (CMAT) at the University of Minho from 2017–2022 and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 2016–2017.
