Fangfang Zhang is a Senior Lecturer in Artificial Intelligence with the Center for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence & School of Engineering and Computer Science, Victoria University of Wellington. She received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from Shenzhen University, China, in 2014 and 2017, respectively. She received her PhD degree the Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, in 2021. Her PhD thesis received the ACM SIGEVO Dissertation Award (Honorable Mention), and IEEE CIS Outstanding PhD Dissertation Award. She is recognised as World's Top 2% Scientists by Stanford/Elsevier. Based on top 500 NZ researchers provided by Scholarly Output in New Zealand over the period 2022 to 2026 (RSNZ provided), Fangfang Zhang is ranked in the 224th.

Her research lies on Artitificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for decison marking, including evolutionary machine learning, genetic programming and evolutionary computation, hyper-heuristic learning/optimisation, transfer learning/multi-task learning, scheduling/planning and combinatorial optimisation, multi-modal learning, feature selection, surrogate, and their applications to primary industry and high-tech/high-value manufacturing. She has over 80 fully refereed publications, including the top journals, such as IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, and IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, and received Best Paper (Runner-up) Awards on top/major EC conferences such as GECCO, EuroGP and AJCAI.

She is an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, Expert Systems with Applications, and Swarm and Evolutionary Computation. She is a Vice-Chair of the IEEE Task Force on Evolutionary Scheduling and Combinatorial Optimisation. She has organised a number of special sessions and tutorials in international conferences such as IEEE CEC and SSCI. She is the Vice-Chair of IEEE New Zealand Central Section. In addition, she is the Secretary of the AI Researchers Association in New Zealand.

Prestigious Awards:

• IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine Outstanding Paper Award for the paper titled "Genetic Programming and Reinforcement Learning on Learning Heuristics for Dynamic Scheduling: A Preliminary Comparison", 2027 (Prize: $1000 USD)
• Early Career Research Excellence Award, Victoria University of Wellington, 2025
• Top 2% Scientists 2025, Stanford/Elsevier's Top 2% Scientists list
• IEEE CIS Outstanding PhD Dissertation Award, 2025 (Prize: $1000 USD)
• ACM SIGEVO Dissertation Award (Honorable Mention), 2022 (Prize: $1000 USD)
• HUMIES Silver Award: ACM Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO), 2023 (Prize: $2000 USD)
• Best Paper Award: ACM Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO), GP Track, 2023
• Best Poster Award Runner-up, Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AJCAI), 2023
• Best Paper Award: European Conference on Genetic Programming (EuroGP), 2022
• Victorias Award for Research Excellence, 2021  (Prize: $1500 NZD)
• Best Paper Runner-Up Award, Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2018 (Prize: $200 NZD)

Major Research Grants:

• 2025-2026: Evolutionary Machine Learning for Fish Sex Classification. Faculty Research Establishment Grant, Victoria University of Wellington, $10,000.00 NZD (PI)
• 2025-2026: Genetic Programming for Port Scheduling. Overseas Collaboration Funding in Ningbo Digital Port Technologies Key Lab at University of Nottingham Ningbo China. Grant: $50,000 RMB (PI)
• 2024-2027, "Machine Learning for Emergency Medical Dispatch: A Data Driven Approach", MBIE Endeavour Smart Idea Fund, $1,000,000 NZD. (Key Reseracher)
• 2020-2027, "A Data-science Driven Evolution of Aquaculture for Building the Blue Economy", MBIE SSIF Fund on Data Science, $13,000,000 NZD. (Key Researcher and Project Coordinator)
• 2022-2023: Te Taupanga Tapoi: A Post-COVID Kaupapa Māori Tour Recommendation System. SHEADI Faculty Strategic Research Grant: $49,000 NZD (Key Researcher)

Major Services/Engagements:

• Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation
• Associate Editor, Swarm and Evolutionary Computation
• Associate Editor, Expert Systems with Applications
• Associate Editor, Evolutionary Intelligence

• Editorial Board Member, Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines
• Editorial Board Member, Intelligent Marine Technology and Systems
• Editorial Board Member, Machine Learning and Knowledge Extraction
• Local Chair of Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AJCAI 2026)
• Local Chair of Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (PRICAI 2025)
• Local Chair of Image and Vision Computing New Zealand (IVCNZ 2025)
• Vice Chair of IEEE New Zealand Central Section, 2025-present
• Secretary of AI Researchers Association, New Zealand, 2024-present