Soumya D. Mohanty, Professor of Physics at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, completed his PhD degree in 1997 at the Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, India. He subsequently held post-doctoral positions at Northwestern University, Penn State, and the Max-Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics. He was also a visiting scholar with the LIGO project at Caltech. Mohanty's research has focused on solving some of the important data analysis challenges faced in Gravitational Wave (GW) astronomy across all observational frequency bands. These include non-parametric regression of very weak signals in noisy data, high-dimensional non-linear parametric regression, time series classification, and analysis of data from large heterogeneous sensor arrays. Mohanty’s work has been funded by grants from the Research Corporation, the U.S. National Science Foundation, and NASA.
This book provides a very readable introduction to swarm intelligence methods, which are useful for solving optimization problems that arise in many fields of science and engineering. By focusing on one particular method (Particle Swarm Optimization) applied to two specific problems, Mohanty gives readers a solid foundation for further investigation into other swarm intelligence methods. A must read for any researcher who wants to stay abreast of this relatively new and upcoming field of statistical analysis. -Prof. Joseph D. Romano, Texas Tech University