Filipe Alvelos is an Associate Professor at the Department of Production and Systems, School of Engineering, University of Minho, Portugal. His main research is devoted to the use of operations research and optimization (e.g. mixed integer programming, meta-heuristics, multi-objective, under uncertainty) to address relevant societal problems (e.g. kidney exchange programs, forest management, wildfire suppression) from modelling to software implementation. He is vice-president of the Portuguese Operational Research Society. Isabel Martins Isabel Martins is a professor at the School of Agriculture, University of Lisbon, Portugal, and a member of the Center for Mathematical Studies at the University of Lisbon.

Her research focuses on operations research applied to various domains within the School of Agriculture, particularly forest management, with an emphasis on environmental and fire-related concerns. Ana Maria A. C. Rocha is an Associate Professor at the Department of Production and Systems (DPS), School of Engineering, University of Minho, Portugal. She is a researcher and coordinator of the "Systems Engineering and Operational Research (SEOR)" research group at the ALGORITMI Research Centre, University of Minho. She has been developing her scientific activity in the areas of systems engineering, optimization, and operational research. In particular, her research interests are in the global optimization, nonlinear optimization and mixed-integer programming areas.