Introduction:

B.K. Tripathy has received three gold medals for topping the list of candidates at graduation and post-graduation level at Berhampur University. He was a professor and head of the Department of Computer Science at Berhampur University until 2007. Dr. Tripathy is now working as a senior professor in School of Computing Science and Engineering, VIT University, Vellore, India. He has received research/academic fellowships from UGC, DST, SERC, and DOE of Government of India for various academic pursuits. Dr. Tripathy has published more than 400 technical papers in different international journals, proceedings of reputed international conferences, and edited research volumes. He has produced 26 PhDs, 13 MPhils, and 4 MS (by research) under his supervision, and has published two text books on soft computing and computer graphics. He was selected as honorary member of the American Mathematical Society from 1992 to 1994 for his distinguished contribution as a reviewer of the American Mathematical Review. Dr. Tripathy has served as the member of Advisory Board or Technical Program Committee member of several international conferences inside India and abroad. He has edited two research volumes for IGI publications and is editing three more research volumes. Dr. Tripathy is a life/senior member of IEEE, ACM, IRSS, CSI, ACEEE, OMS, and IMS. He is an editorial board member/reviewer of more than 60 journals. He has guest-edited some research journals and has held technical grants for research projects from various funding agencies like UGC, DST, and DRDO. His research interest includes fuzzy sets and systems, rough sets and knowledge engineering, data clustering, social network analysis, soft computing, granular computing, content-based learning, neighborhood systems, soft set theory, social internet of things, big data analytics, theory of multisets, and list theory. J. Anuradha is an associate professor and head of the Department of Database Systems in School of Computing Science and Engineering, VIT University, Vellore, India. She has more than 13 years of teaching experience and has published at least 30 technical papers in international journals/proceedings of international conferences/edited chapters of reputable publications. She has worked and contributed in the field of data mining, medical diagnosis, and computational intelligence. Her research focuses on machine learning algorithms using soft computing techniques. Dr. Anuradha is currently working on spatial mining and big data analytics. She has coauthored a book, Soft Computing: Advances and Applications by Cengage Publishers. Her research interest includes fuzzy set theory and applications; rough set theory; and knowledge engineering and information retrieval.