About the Authors

Fábio M. Soares holds a master's degree in applied computing from UFPA and is currently a PhD candidate at the same university. He has been designing neural network solutions since 2004 and has developed applications with this technique in several fields, ranging from telecommunications to chemistry process modeling, and his research topics cover supervised learning for data-driven modeling.

He is also self-employed, offering services such as IT infrastructure management as well as database administration to a number of small- and medium-sized companies in northern Brazil. In the past, he has worked for big companies such as Albras, one of the most important aluminium smelters in the world, and Eletronorte, a great power supplier in Brazil. He also has experience as a lecturer, having worked at the Federal Rural University of Amazon and as a Faculty of Castanhal, both in the state of Pará, teaching subjects involving programming and artificial intelligence.

He has published a number of works, many of them available in English, all including the topics of artificial intelligence applied to some problem. His publications include conference proceedings, such as the TMS (The Minerals Metals and Materials Society), Light Metals and the Intelligent Data Engineering and Automated Learning. He has also has published two book chapters for Intech.

I would like to give a special acknowledgement to God for having given me the opportunity to get access to rich knowledge on this theme, which I simply love doing research on. Special thanks to my family, my father, Josafá, and mother, Maria Alice (in memoriam), who would be very proud of me for this book, and also my brother, Flávio, my aunt, Maria Irenice, as well as all my relatives who always supported me in some way during my studies. I would also like to thank the support of my advisor, Prof. Roberto Limão. I am very grateful to him for having invited me to work with him on many projects regarding artificial intelligence and neural networks. Also, special thanks to my partners and former partners from Exodus Sistemas, who have helped me in my challenges in programming and IT infrastructure. Finally, I'd like to thank my friend Alan Souza, who wrote this book with me, for having extended to me this authorship.

Alan M.F. Souza is computer engineer from Instituto de Estudos Superiores da Amazônia (IESAM). He holds a post-graduate degree in project management software and a master's degree in industrial processes (applied computing) from Universidade Federal do Pará (UFPA). He has been working with neural networks since 2009 and has worked with IT Brazilian companies developing in Java, PHP, SQL, and other programming languages since 2006. He is passionate about programming and computational intelligence. Currently, he is a professor at Universidade da Amazônia (UNAMA) and a PhD candidate at UFPA.

Since I was a kid, I thought about writing a book. So, this book is a dream come true and the result of hard work. I'd like to thank God for giving me this opportunity. I'd also like to thank my father, Célio, my mother, Socorro, my sister, Alyne, and my amazing wife, Tayná, for understanding my absences and worries at various moments. I am grateful to all the members of my family and friends for always supporting me in difficult times and wishing for my success. I'd like to thank all the professors who passed through my life, especially Prof. Roberto Limão for introducing me the very first neural network concept. I must register my gratitude to Fábio Soares for this great partnership and friendship. Finally, I must appreciate the tireless team at Packt Publishing for the invitation and for helping us in the production process as a whole.

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