Nikolaos Ploskas is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Chemical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, USA. He received his Bachelor of Science degree, Master’s degree, and Ph.D. in Computer Systems from the Department of Applied Informatics of the University of Macedonia, Greece. His primary researchinterests are in:Operations research,Mathematical programming,Linear programming,Parallel programming,GPU programming,Decision support systems.Dr. Ploskas has participated in several international and national research projects. He is the author or co-author of writings in more than 40 publications, including high-impact journals and book chapters, and conference publications. He has also served as a reviewer for many scientific journals. He received an honorary award from HELORS (Hellenic Operations Research Society) for the best doctoral dissertation in operations research (2014). Nikolaos Samaras is a Professor at the Department of Applied Informatics, School of Information Sciences, University of Macedonia, Greece. Professor Samaras’s current-research interests are at the interface between computer science and operations research, which apply to a variety of engineering and scientific systems: Linear/Non Linear optimization: theory, algorithms, and software Network optimization: theory, algorithms, and software Scientific computing: HPC, and GPU-programming He has served on the editorial board of the Operations Research: An International Journal, and as a reviewer in many scientific journals. He has also held numerous positions within HELORS (Hellenic Operations Research Society). He was awarded with the Thomson ISI/ASIS&T Citation Analysis Research Grant (2005). Dr. Samaras has published more than 35 journal papers in high-impact journals, including Computational Optimization and Applications, Computers and Operations Research, European Journal of Operational Research, Annals of Operations Research, Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, Discrete Optimization, Applied Mathematics and Computation, International Journal of Computer Mathematics, Electronics Letters, Computer Applications in Engineering Education, Journal of Computational Science, and Applied Thermal Engineering. He has also published more than 85 conference papers.
