On behalf of the organizing committee, it is our great pleasure to invite you to the bi-annual IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (IEEE WCCI) which will be held in the magnificent city of Vancouver, Canada, 24-29 July 2016. Financially sponsored by the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS), IEEE WCCI 2016 will host three conferences: The 2016 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN 2016), the 2016 IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ-IEEE 2016), and the 2016 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (IEEE CEC 2016) under one roof.

Since the first WCCI taking place in Orlando in 1994, this Congress series and the computational intelligence community have progressed tremendously. The IEEE WCCI 2016 received a record number of 3,015 paper submissions with over 1,700 advance registrations from 70 countries. The highlights of the Congress include,

• 5 Keynotes by top-notch researchers - Leslie Valiant, Ronald R. Yager, Marco Dorigo, Ricardo Baeza-Yates and Charles C. Ragin;
• 15 Plenary speeches by world-renown scholars on pertinent and captivating topics within the technical scope of each conference;
• A public lecture by David B. Fogel on the topic of “Fun and Games with Artificial Intelligence”;
• 6 valuable and engaging panel sessions by revered researchers within the field of computational intelligence, including a panel session on “Turning Big Data Challenges into Opportunities”, memorial sessions of David Casasent and Walter J. Freeman;
• 24 free tutorials covering a diverse range of topics offering a unique opportunity to disseminate in-depth information on specific topics in computational intelligence;
• 4 workshops to stimulate discussions between participants on active and emerging topics of computational intelligence, including a workshop on “Key Challenges and Future Directions of Evolutionary Computation”;
• 175 special sessions organized by domain experts that are encompassed within the technical scope of the conference;
• 10 challenging and contemporary competitions offering distinctive topics in each track to cater to every participant's needs. In particular, human vs. computer Go demonstration games will be held during the IEEE WCCI 2016. Applied with deep learning technologies, a few top computer Go programs including Zen (Japan), DarkForest (Facebook / USA), and CGI (Taiwan), are invited to compete with world-class professional Go players in the games.

The IEEE WCCI 2016 will be held at the Vancouver Convention Centre, Vancouver, Canada. Vancouver is Canada’s Pacific gem, offering a winning combination of world-class hotels, meeting venues, and restaurants in a setting of spectacular beauty. Few convention cities can offer such a wide range of cosmopolitan amenities in a downtown core that is safe, clean, pedestrian friendly, and stunning in its backdrop of mountains and ocean. 

Apart from the technical programs, participants are also cordially invited to attend various social events, such as welcome reception, award banquet, students and young professionals reception, women in computational intelligence reception, IEEE CIS chapters forum etc. In addition, participants are also encouraged to explore the beautiful city of Vancouver which has an endless supply of attractions and things to see and do.