CV

Qualifications

• Fellow of The Higher Education Academy, November 2024.
• Associate Fellow of The Higher Education Academy, November 2023.
• PhD in Computer Science, University of Nottingham, 2018-2023
• MSc in Advanced Software Engineering, Kings College London, 2016-2017
• BSc in Computer Science and Technolgy, Shandong Normal University, 2012-2016

Employment

• Data Scientist (KTP Associate) - Project No.KTP13737 (May 2024 – Present)
  • Knowledge Base Partner: Business School, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
  • Company Partner: Strategic Innovation Limited, Cambridge, UK
  • Project lead: Dr John Harvey (University of Nottingham)
  • Supervsiors: Professor James Goulding (University of Nottingham), Mina Forest (Strategic Innovation Limited)
• Teaching Associate - Faculty of Science (Oct. 2022 – Apr. 2024)
  • University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
  • Duties included: To organise, develop and deliver teaching and assessment across both the BSc and MSc Computer Science modules.
• Software Research Engineer (KTP Associate) - Project No.KTP11692 (Apr. 2022 – Sept. 2022)
  • University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
  • Duties included: To develop and implement novel and advanced, hyper-heuristics based routing technologies for standard and non-standard haulage markets.
  • Supervisor: Professor Ender Ozcan (University of Nottingham)
• Research Assistant - Project AMiCC (Dec. 2021 – Mar. 2022)
  • University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
  • Duties included: To evaluate the benefits of static wireless charging systems through the deployment of an innovative charging system to enable fleet vehicles with short dwell times and high utilisation to switch to electric intelligently.
  • Supervisor: Professor Lucelia Rodrigues (University of Nottingham)

Publications

Automated design of search algorithms: Learning on algorithmic components

Meng, W., & Qu, R. (2021). Automated design of search algorithms: Learning on algorithmic components. Expert Systems with Applications, 185, 115493.

Sequential Rule Mining for Automated Design of Meta-heuristics

Meng, W., & Qu, R. (2023, July). Sequential Rule Mining for Automated Design of Meta-heuristics. In Proceedings of the Companion Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (pp. 1727-1735).

Automated design of local search algorithms: Predicting algorithmic components with LSTM

Meng, W., & Qu, R. (2023). Automated design of local search algorithms: Predicting algorithmic components with LSTM. Expert Systems with Applications, [DOI: 10.1016/j.eswa.2023.121431](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2023.121431)

Simulating Policy Discussions with Digital Footprints and Large Language Models

Meng, W., Harvey, J., Carter, C., Nica-Avram, G., Goulding, J., Frobisher, P., Forrest, M. and N/A (2025) “Simulating Policy Discussions with Digital Footprints and Large Language Models”, International Journal of Population Data Science, 10(5). doi: 10.23889/ijpds.v10i5.3328.

Teaching

BSc/MSc Project Ideas

Teaching Summary

Service and leadership

Reviewer for

• Computers and Operations Research
• Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence
• Expert Systems with Applications
• IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine
• IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation
• Journal of the Operational Research Society
• PeerJ Computer Science
• Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (PRICAI’2025)
• IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (SSCI’2025)
• IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC) (CEC’2024, 2025)
• The Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference(GECCO’2023-2025)

Membership

• Member of Diversity & Inclusion sub-committee at IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, since January 2024.
• Member of IEEE Taskforce on Evolutionary Scheduling and Combinatorial Optimisation (ESCO) at IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, since October 2023.
• Member of IEEE Taskforce on Automated Algorithm Design, Configuration and Selection (AADCS) at IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, since July 2023.
• Member of Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) SIGEVO, since July 2022.
• Candidate Associate of The Operational Research Society, since June 2022.

Committee Chair & Membership

• Publicity Chair of IEEE WCCI-CEC (CEC’2026), June 21 – 26, 2026, Maastricht, Netherlands.
• Member of the Programme Committee of Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (PRICAI’2025), November 17–21, 2025, Wellington, New Zealand.
• Member of the Programme Committee of IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence (SSCI’2025) for Energy, Transport and Environmental Sustainability, March 17-20, 2025, Trondheim, Norway.
• Member of the Programme Committee of IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC) (CEC’2025), June 8-12, 2025, Hangzhou, China.
• Member of the Programme Committee of IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC) (CEC’2024), June 30-July 5, 2024, Yokohama, Japan.
• Member of the Programme Committee of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO’2025), July 14-18, 2025, Málaga, Spain.
• Member of the Programme Committee of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-2024), July 14-18, 2024, Melbourne, Australia.
• Member of the Programme Committee of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-2023), July 15-19, 2023, Lisbon, Portugal.

Conferences / Event Organisation

• Co-admin and Instructor of the Heuristic Optimisation and Learning NATCOR course, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK, 8-12 April 2024.
• Organiser of the ML4VRP Competition of The Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference(GECCO’2024) , Melbourne, Australia, July 14th-18th, 2024.
• Organiser of the ML4VRP Competition of The Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference(GECCO’2023) , Lisbon, Portugal, July 15th-19th, 2023.

Honors and Awards

• Best Poster Prize (As voted by the delegates), Digital Footprints 2025 at University of Leeds, May 14–15, 2025, Nottingham, UK
• Outstanding Reviewer for the Journal of the Operational Research Society (2023)
  • The Operational Research Society
• Nottingham Reward Scheme (NRS) Award (2023)
  • University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
• Researcher Academy Conference, Travel and Training Fund (2023)
  • University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
• 1st Scholarship for Outstanding Students (2015)
  • School of Computer Science and Technology, Shandong Normal University, Shandong, China
• 2nd Scholarship for Outstanding Students (2013, 2014)
  • School of Computer Science and Technology, Shandong Normal University, Shandong, China
• Outstanding League Party Leader/Outstanding Student Leader (2013, 2014, 2015)
  • School of Computer Science and Technology, Shandong Normal University, Shandong, China