Jianhua Zhang was born in Shaanxi, China in 1971. He received MSc degree in Control Theory and Applications from Beijing University of Technology, China, in April 1996 and PhD degree in Electrical Engineering under the supervision of Prof J.F. Böhme from Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany in Feb. 2005. Between 1999 and 2002 he was a Lecturer at Department of Automation, Beijing University of Technology. Afterwards he worked for three years as Guest Scientist and Scientific Coworker at Institute of Automation (Prof K. Janschek), Technische Universität Dresden and Signal Theory Group (Prof J.F. Böhme), Ruhr-Universität Bochum, both in Germany, respectively. Between 2005 and 2006 he was appointed Postdoctoral Research Associate at Intelligent Systems Laboratory (Profs D.A. Linkens and M. Mahfouf), Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering, University of Sheffield, UK. He has been a Full Professor at Department of Automation, East China University of Science and Technology (ECUST) since Feb. 2007. He was a Visiting Professor and Senior Research Fellow at Control Systems Group (Prof J. Raisch), Technische Universität Berlin, Germany in 2011 (for 6 months), 2012 (for a month), 2014 (for a month), and 2015 (for 2 months). He also had short-term academic visit to University of Dortmund, University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, TU Dresden, CNRS Paris, University of Saarland, University of Duisburg, University of Stuttgart and ETH Zurich.

As Principal Investigator or core member, Dr Zhang has been involved in over 20 research and industrial projects in China and Europe funded by, for example, DFG (German Research Society), EU, EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, UK) and NSFC (National Natural Science Foundation of China). His current research interests are in computational intelligence (soft computing), machine learning, intelligent data modeling and analysis, pattern recognition, biomedical signal processing, modeling and control of biological systems, human-machine systems, brain-machine interaction, neuroinformatics, and neuroergonomics. So far he has published one research monograph, 3 translated books, several invited chapters in research monographs and over 110 peer-reviewed journal and conference proceedings papers.

Dr Zhang is an Elected Member of International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) Technical Committee (TC) on Human Machine Systems, Large Scale Complex Systems, Biological & Medical Systems, and TC on Transportation Systems. He currently serves as Guest Associate Editor for Neural Technology, Frontiers in Neuroscience (IF=3.398) and a Frontiers Topic Editor. He served as IPC Co-Chair for the 13th IFAC Symp. on Complex Large-Scale Systems (Shanghai, July 2013), Technical Associate Editor for the 19th IFAC World Congress (Cape Town, Aug. 2014), and IPC Co-Chair for the 13th IFAC Symp. on Analysis, Design and Evaluation of Human-Machine Systems (Kyoto, Aug. 2016). He has served as the IPC Member for some leading international conferences (e.g., ICCN2015, IFAC BMS2015, CoDIT’16 and CCC2014-16) and invited reviewer for a number of international journals (e.g., IEEE T-BME, IEEE T-SMC: Systems, IEEE T-HMS, Neurocomputing, IET Signal Processing, Digital Signal Processing, J. of The Franklin Institute, J. of Ergonomics, Applied Soft Computing, Cognitive Neurodynamics, Biomedical Signal Processing and Control and Biomedical Engineering/Biomedizinische Technik). He is also the invited Keynote Speaker at several international conferences (e.g., EEA2016 and AIST2016).

Dr Zhang is the recipient of a full scholarship from German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) between 2002 and 2004, Chinese government Scholarship and Senior Research Fellowship from China Scholarship Council in 2001 and 2012 respectively, and Fellowship for Experienced Researchers from Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems, Germany, in 2011. He was selected into Shanghai Municipal Pujiang Talents Program in 2007.