Xin-She Yang

Xin-She Yang is a British-based applied mathematician and computer scientist, a Reader at Middlesex University who earlier worked as a senior research scientist at the National Physical Laboratory. He is best known as the developer of a family of nature-inspired heuristic algorithms for engineering optimization: the firefly algorithm (2008), cuckoo search (2009), the bat algorithm (2010) and the flower pollination algorithm (2012). He obtained a DPhil in applied mathematics from the University of Oxford, with a doctoral thesis on the mathematical modelling of compaction and diagenesis in sedimentary basins. He was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications in 2021, has appeared on the Highly Cited Researchers list since 2016, and has given many invited keynote talks at conferences in several countries. His book Nature-Inspired Optimization Algorithms was published by Elsevier in 2014, and the firefly algorithm and cuckoo search are each cited in a very large number of research papers.