D. Daniel Sheu graduated from National Taiwan University with a B.S.M.E. degree in 1977. He received an M.S.M.E. degree from State University of New York at Buffalo in 1983. He received his second master-level engineering degree focusing on computer science and his Ph.D. degree in engineering from UCLA in 1987 and 1989. He also received his master of business administration (MBA) degree from Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University in 1994. Daniel has 9 years of industrial experience primarily in the electronic industries with Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, and Matsushita. His areas of interests include Systematic Innovation/TRIZ, Design & Manufacturing Management, Equipment Management, and Factory Diagnosis. He has been with National Tsing Hua University since 1996. Daniel is a representative of MA TRIZ Council of Expertise & Methodology, a MA TRIZ Level 3 certified TRIZ expert, and a Certified Manufacturing Engineer.

 Wei-Chang Yeh is currently a distinguished professor of the Department of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management at National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. from the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington. The majority of his current research and future work are focused around algorithms, including exact solution methods and soft computing to all kinds of network reliability problems and optimization problems (wireless sensor network, cloud computing, IoT, big data, energy), etc. He has published more than 300 research papers in highly ranked journals and conference papers and has been awarded the Outstanding Research Award twice, the Distinguished Scholars Research Project once, and an Overseas Research Fellowship twice by the Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan. 

 Denis Cavallucci is a Professor at the French National Institute of Applied Sciences (INSA Strasbourg), France, and a recognized expert in systematic innovation, inventive design, and TRIZ-based methodologies. His research focuses on innovation engineering, computer-aided innovation, knowledge-based design, and the development of methods and tools for inventive problem solving. He has led numerous international research projects and has published extensively in the fields of innovation management, design science, and systematic innovation. Prof. Cavallucci is widely recognized for his contributions to advancing TRIZ and its integration into modern engineering and product development processes.

 Roland De Guio is one of the leading scholars in the field of Systematic Innovation and TRIZ. He is Professor at INSA Strasbourg, France, where he has conducted pioneering research on inventive design, innovation methodologies, creativity science, and the systematic resolution of complex problems. His contributions have significantly advanced the theoretical foundations and practical applications of TRIZ, helping establish it as a scientific discipline within innovation research. Through extensive publications, international projects, and academic leadership, Prof. De Guio has played a key role in promoting systematic approaches to innovation across academia and industry worldwide.

 Dr. Paul R. Filmore is affiliated with the School of Computing, Electronics and Mathematics at the University of Plymouth, United Kingdom. He is an experienced consultant, educator, and researcher specializing in Systematic Innovation, TRIZ, creative problem solving, and organizational change. His work focuses on helping organizations overcome innovation barriers, develop breakthrough technologies and products, and build innovation-driven strategies for future growth. Dr. Filmore has extensive experience introducing TRIZ and systematic innovation methodologies to industry, government agencies, and engineering organizations. His interests include technological forecasting, innovation management, change leadership, conflict resolution, team development, and engineering-focused management education.

 Prof. Zhen He is a Distinguished Professor and Doctoral Supervisor at Tianjin University, China. He is an Academician of the International Academy for Quality Sciences (IAQS), a Changjiang Scholar Distinguished Professor, and a recipient of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars. His research interests include quality management, systematic innovation, intelligent manufacturing, digital transformation, and service innovation. His work focuses on developing innovative methodologies and management systems to improve organizational performance, technological competitiveness, and sustainable development. Through extensive research, academic leadership, and international collaboration, Prof. He has contributed significantly to advancing quality science and innovation management in both academia and industry.

 Prof. Andrew Kusiak is the Roy J. Carver Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Iowa, USA. He is internationally recognized for his pioneering contributions to intelligent systems, data-driven innovation, smart manufacturing, artificial intelligence, and sustainable engineering. His research integrates machine learning, optimization, digital transformation, and systems engineering to advance next-generation manufacturing and innovation processes. Prof. Kusiak has authored hundreds of scientific publications and several influential books, and his work has significantly shaped the fields of intelligent manufacturing, Industry 4.0, renewable energy systems, and data analytics. He is a Fellow of multiple prestigious professional organizations and has received numerous international awards for his contributions to engineering, innovation, and systems science.

 Prof. Jay Lee is the L.W. Scott Alter Chair Professor and Director of the Industrial AI Center at the University of Cincinnati, USA. He is internationally recognized as a pioneer of Industrial Artificial Intelligence (Industrial AI) and a leading contributor to predictive manufacturing, digital twins, cyber-physical systems, and smart factories. His groundbreaking work on Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) has helped establish the foundations of intelligent, self-aware manufacturing systems and Industry 4.0 technologies. Through the integration of AI, machine learning, and engineering systems, his research advances data-driven approaches to industrial innovation and next-generation manufacturing.

Dr. Litvin is one of the founders of GEN TRIZ and is responsible for the quality of its innovation services. He drives the ongoing development, testing and implementation of GEN TRIZ's methodology, and supervises GEN TRIZ's Global Knowledge Network of experts. Dr. Litvin has led dozens of innovation projects for Fortune 1000 companies worldwide including Alcoa, British American Tobacco, Chiquita, Clorox and Covidien. He is also the CEO of Algorithm, GEN TRIZ's technical innovation center in St. Petersburg, Russia. Prior to joining GEN TRIZ, Dr. Litvin served as Executive Vice President and Chief Scientist of Pragmatic Vision International (PVI). At PVI, he developed more than 100 breakthrough technologies for the company's delivery system in Russia and Israel. Before PVI, he served as Vice President at Invention Machine Corporation where he led numerous international consulting projects for Fortune 500 companies such as P&G, Motorola and Intel. Dr. Litvin is one of the world's foremost experts on Open Innovation, Value Engineering, and TRIZ. He has more than 35 years of experience developing, teaching, and implementing innovation methods.

 Professor Stephen Lu, David Packard Chair in Manufacturing at the University of Southern California, is a researcher, teacher, and education entrepreneur. He has excelled in the academic and business worlds, holding a permanent endowed professorship at a leading research university and serving advisory roles at multiple international organizations. Dr. Lu's academic interests and technical expertise are in design thinking, collaborative engineering, technological innovation, and education reform. At USC, he created the Product Development Engineering (PDE) master's degree and the Viterbi iPodia (ViP) global education program. In 2012, he established the iPodia Alliance - a global consortium among leading universities to promote the "classrooms-without-borders" paradigm.

 Darrell has devoted his whole life to the world of innovation. From inventing new games as an annoying pre-schooler, to reading Edward de Bono books at the age of ten, to spending 15 years running R&D programmes at Rolls-Royce, to teaching at some of the finest academic institutions, to establishing SI 25 years ago, he’s had the good fortune to work in every industry with some of the most famous organisations, on every continent of the planet, learning from and working with some of the greatest innovators. He’s an accidental innovation Authority in an either/or world of academics and artisans.

 Prof. Manabu Sawaguchi is a Professor at the College of Technology Management, Ritsumeikan University, Japan, and a leading expert in Value Engineering (VE), TRIZ, and technology management. With more than three decades of experience in innovation practice and research, he has played a pivotal role in promoting systematic approaches to technological innovation and value creation in both industry and academia. His research focuses on innovation strategy, technology management, inventive problem solving, and the integration of TRIZ and Value Engineering methodologies. As a Vice Chairman of the Japan TRIZ Society and Advisor to the Society of Japanese Value Engineering, Prof. Sawaguchi has made significant contributions to advancing Systematic Innovation and breakthrough thinking in engineering and organizational development.

 Dr. Valeri Souchkov is the Founder and Director of XTRIZ Ltd., The Netherlands, and an internationally recognized expert in TRIZ, systematic innovation, and inventive problem solving. He has been actively involved in the development, education, and industrial application of TRIZ methodologies for more than three decades. His work focuses on advanced TRIZ, innovation strategy, technology forecasting, and the systematic development of breakthrough solutions. Through extensive consulting, training, and international collaboration, Dr. Souchkov has helped organizations worldwide strengthen their innovation capabilities and adopt structured approaches to solving complex technical and business challenges. He is widely regarded as one of the leading contributors to the global dissemination and modernization of TRIZ and Systematic Innovation.

 Prof. Yong Won Song is a Professor in the Department of Nano-Optical Engineering at Korea Polytechnic University, Republic of Korea. He is a leading advocate of TRIZ and Systematic Innovation in Korea, with extensive experience in innovation education, inventive problem solving, and industrial technology development. Prof. Song has played a pivotal role in introducing and disseminating TRIZ methodologies across Korean universities, government agencies, and major industrial organizations, including SK Hynix, POSCO, LG, and Hyundai. His research and professional activities focus on creative thinking, engineering innovation, technology forecasting, and the application of TRIZ to industrial problem solving and innovation education. Through national projects, international collaborations, and MATRIZ certification programs, he has significantly contributed to the development of systematic innovation capabilities in both academia and industry.

 Dr. Oliver Yu, Adjunct Full Professor of Business Analytics, is a recognized expert on technology and resource strategy planning and analysis.  He is also Co-Founder & Secretary of International Society of Innovation Methods, a technical society for promoting scientific approach to creativity.  Prior to joining SJSU in 2000, he was for 11 years Director of Energy & Technology Strategies at Stanford Research Institute (SRI), and 15 years the Manager of Planning Analysis at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), responsible for energy industry analysis and EPRI-wide technology research planning.  He has published over 80 professional papers and authored and co-authored 6 technical books, including Technology Portfolio Planning and Management, Springer 2006, Technology Management and Forecasting, Tsinghua University Press 2008, and Advances in Technology and Innovation Management, IEEE 2012. Dr. Yu has been a Consulting Associate Professor at Stanford, and an invited lecturer at many univerisities and organizer and keynote speaker at numerous technical conferences around the world, including the General Chair of both a National Meeting and the first International Meeting of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS); twice keynote speaker at both the Asia-Pacific Technology Foresight Conferences and the Chinese Academy of Science. In recent years, Dr. Yu has focused mainly on innovation management.  In 2011, he organized a Global Innovation Forum jointly with IBM, SRI, and SJSU.  He was a Visiting Professor on Asian Business Innovations at Kyushu University in Japan in 2013, a keynote speaker at the Summer School for Global Entrepreneurship at University of Muenster in Germany in 2014, a keynote speaker on innovation management at the annual conferences of the Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET) in 2014 and 2015, and elected as a Fellow of PICMET in 2015, and at the INOTEX international innovation conference in Iran in 2016. He was a board member of the IEEE Technology & Engineering Management Society (TEMS), and an organizer of its 2019 International Symposium of Innovation & Entrepreneurship in China.  He is currently co-authoring a book with Professor Rainer Hasenauer of Vienna University of Economics and Business on Intrapreneurship Management to be published by Wiley Science-IEEE Press in late 2023.

 Dr. Zhinan Zhang is a professor in School of Mechanical Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and a Fellow of the ASME. He is the associate editor of the ASME Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering, Journal Frontiers in Mechanical Engineering/Tribology，member of editorial boards of Friction, Surface Science and Technology, Journal of Integrated Design and Process Science, etc. He is also the founder of IEEE International Conference on Design Science.

 António Abreu is a Professor at NOVA School of Science and Technology, NOVA University Lisbon, Portugal. Before joining the academic world in 1998, he had an industrial career since 1992 in manufacturing industries with management positions. He concluded his PhD in 2007, and the Habilitation title in 2020, in Industrial Engineering. He is member of several international associations e.g. IFAC at TC5.3 Enterprise Integration & Networking, ISO/TC 258, and INSTICC – Institute for Systems and Technologies of Information, Control and Communication. He is co-founder of SOCOLNET - Society of Collaborative Networks. As researcher, he has been involved in several National and European research projects. He has been involved in the organization and member of the program committees of several national and international conferences. He is member of review board and editorial board of several international journals. He has more than 130 publications in books, journals, and conferences proceedings in the area of logistics, project management, quality management, open-Innovation, risk management and lean management.

Dr. Koray Altun is an Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering at TU Bursa, and a Research Collaborator (former a Senior Researcher) at GLORAD Center for Global R&D and Innovation, a research organization with centers in PR China, the US, Latin America, and Europe. He is also the founder and manager of a start-up focused on digital innovation & software consultancy. He holds PhD and BSc degrees of Industrial Engineering from Gaziantep University and Erciyes University, respectively. He has published his papers in some well-respected journals and he has led many consulting engagements in many reputed companies with the focus on R&D, technology and innovation management. His recent research interests include: Innovation Excellence Model, Systematic Innovation, Digital Innovation.

 Dr. Olga Bogatyreva is an acclaimed expert in inventive problem solving and bio-inspired design, with extensive expertise in behaviour and social psychology, biology, and complex system theory. She holds a DSc in Complexity Theory and a PhD in Biology and is also a certified TRIZ expert by MATRIZ. As the Director of BioTRIZ Ltd., Olga collaborates with educational institutions in Europe, Asia and the UK, such as University College London, King’s College London, and the University of Oxford. Dr. Olga Bogatyreva developed a problem-solving tool for astronauts on missions to Mars and the Moon (and this course is based on this work!), commissioned by the European Space Agency. This tool, based on her research of ant behaviour, understands messages in multiple languages and detects early signs of off-nominal situations. It has the potential to greatly improve our knowledge of how natural information systems work. Dr. Olga Bogatyreva's field of interest centres on bio-inspired organisational behaviour and group decision-making. Her pioneering work on the individual behaviour of ants in their natural environments is groundbreaking: She discovered how ants resolve social and ecological crises. With over 100 scientific publications, two patents and three books to her name, she actively implements her research in business coaching and consultancy across industries in the UK, Europe and Japan.

 Luis Manuel Camarinha Matos is a Full Professor at Universidade Nova de Lisboa Centro de Technologies and Systems and Director of Laboratory, Institute, Museum, Centre or Observatory at Universidade Nova de Lisboa Center for Technologies and Systems. He has published 119 articles in specialized journals. It has 45 book chapter(s) and 58 book(s). He has received several award(s) and/or honors, including Honorary Doctorate from the Polytechnic University of Bucharest. In his professional activities, he interacted with 197 collaborator(s) in co-authorship of scientific papers. 

 J.-H. Chen is a Professor in the Department of Systems Engineering and Naval Architecture at National Taiwan Ocean University, Taiwan. His research focuses on computational fluid dynamics (CFD), marine hydrodynamics, propeller cavitation, cavitation-induced noise, and viscous fluid mechanics. He has extensive experience in the numerical simulation and experimental investigation of fluid flow phenomena associated with marine propulsion systems and ocean engineering applications. His work contributes to the advancement of ship propulsion performance, underwater acoustics, and the understanding of complex fluid–structure interactions in marine environments. Through his research and academic activities, Prof. Chen has supported the development of advanced analytical and computational methods for naval architecture and marine engineering.

 Dr. Li-Yuan Chen is a Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management at Chung Hua University, Taiwan. His research interests focus on Systematic Innovation (TRIZ), Business Process Reengineering (BPR), Automated System Design, and Case-Based Reasoning (CBR). He has extensive experience in applying innovation methodologies and intelligent problem-solving approaches to industrial and engineering practices.

In addition to his academic research, Dr. Chen possesses substantial industrial expertise in patent development and technology licensing, work-in-process management, machine vision applications, and automated equipment calibration. His work bridges systematic innovation theories with practical industrial applications, contributing to process improvement, technological innovation, and engineering problem solving.

Prof. Weiwei Jiang is currently an associate professor with the School of Information and Communication Engineering, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, and Key Laboratory of Universal Wireless Communications, Ministry of Education. He received the B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 2013 and 2018, respectively. His current research interests include artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data, wireless communication and edge computing. He has published more than 100 academic papers in IEEE Trans and other journals, with more than 6800 citations in Google Scholar. He is one of 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 Stanford's List of World's Top 2% Scientists.