Hugues Bersini is born the 19/1/61 and is living in Brussels. He has an MS degree (1983) and a Ph.D in engineering (1989) both from Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB). After having been supported as a researcher by a EEC grant from the JRC-CEE in Ispra (1984-1987), he became member of the IRIDIA laboratory (the AI laboratory of ULB). He is now heading this same lab with Marco Dorigo.
Since 1992, he has an assistant professor position at ULB and has now become full professor, teaching computer science, Web technology, business intelligence, programming and AI. He has been partner of various industrial projects and EEC esprit projects involving the use of adaptive fuzzy or neuro controllers, optimisation algorithms and data mining. Over the last 30 years, he has published about 300 papers on his research work which covers the domains of cognitive sciences, AI for process control, connectionism, fuzzy control, lazy learning for modelling and control, reinforcement learning, biological networks, the use of neural nets for medical applications, frustration in complex systems, chaos, computational chemistry, object-oriented technologies, immune engineering and epistemology. He is quite often asked for giving tutorials covering the use of neural networks, object orientation and the behaviour of complex systems. He is a pionneer in the exploitation of biological metaphors (such as the immune system) for engineering and cognitive sciences. He co-organised at ULB the second conference on Parallel Problem Solving Nature (PPSN), the second European Conference on Artificial Life (ECAL). He co-organised the three European Workshops on Reinforcement Learning. During the 1996 Conference on Evolutionary Computation, he co-organised the first International Competition on Evolutionary Optimisation algorithms.
He co-organised the second International Competition on Evolutionary Optimisation algorithms held in Indiana University. He organized several tributes to one of his main scientific inspirator: Francisco Varela. The most recent one was organised in Paris, Tribute in Paris . He organised the 5th International Conference on Artificial Immune System : ICARIS . He organised the 11th European Conference of Artificial Life, ECAL 2011 . He was the coordinator of the FAMIMO LTR European Project on fuzzy control for multi-input multi-output processes and was involved in two esprit projects: NEMORETS and METHODS that both cover the exploitation of evolutionary and optimisation algorithms for industrial design.
He is the author of fourteen french books covering basic computer sciences: "Tout ce que vous avez toujours voulu savoir sur l'informatique" published at Best Of, "L'Orienté Objet", "Kotlin" and "L'IA par la pratique" published at Eyrolles, "Les fondements de l'informatique" published at Vuibert and "De L'Intelligence Humaine à L'Intelligence Artificielle" published at Ellipse, three on complex systems: "Des réseaux et des sciences" and "Comment définir le vivant" published at Vuibert, "Qu'est-ce l'Emergence" published at Ellipses. Recently he published "Informatique et Cinéma" at Ellipse, "Haro sur la compétition" at PUF, "Le Tamagotchi de Mme Yen" and "Le dernier fado de l'androide" at Le Pommier. He teaches AI, object-oriented programming: C++, java, .Net, Kotlin, UML, Django/Pyton, Design Patterns, to university students (Solvay and Polytechnic Schools) and for industries. He is consultant for companies in OO, Data-Mining technologies and Business Intelligence. These last years, several spin-off have been created out of researchs done at IRIDIA such as: Cluepoints, Tevizz and In Silico DB. These last years also, he has pioneered the creation of the new Brussels Institute FARI tackling public goods such as mobility, epidemies, access to jobs or to schools, energy transition... at the level of Brussels ( FARI)