Dr. Yi Mei is a Professor at the School of Engineering and Computer Science, Victoria University of Wellington. He is the Programme Director (Computer Science).

Yi's research is focused on artificial intelligence and evolutionary computation for optimisation and decision making. Yi has more than 250 fully refereed publications, including the top journals such as IEEE TPAMI, IEEE TEVC, IEEE TCYB, European Journal of Operational Research, ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, and top conferences such as AAAI, IJCAI, ICLR, GECCO. He is recognised as Stanford University/Elsevier's World's Top 2% Scientist since 2021. He is a Fellow of Engineering New Zealand and an IEEE Senior Member.

Prestigious Awards/Recognitions:

• World's Top 2% Scientist since 2021
• Top Researcher in Genetic Programming Bibliography (#18 / ~20K authors)
• Victoria University of Wellington Ki te Pae - Research Excellence Award 2024
• Best Student Paper Award: EvoStar - The Leading European Event on Bio‑Inspired AI 2026
• Best Student Paper Award: IEEE International Telecommunication Networks and Applications Conference (ITNAC) 2025
• Best Paper Award: ACM Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference 2024, GP Track
• HUMIES Silver Award: ACM Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) 2023
• Best Paper Award: ACM Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, GP Track 2023
• Best Paper Award: ACM Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, ECOM Track 2022
• Best Paper Award: European Conference on Genetic Programming 2022
• Victoria University of Wellington Early Career Research Excellence Award 2018
• Outstanding Paper Award: IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation (top journal in AI and EC) 2017

Major Research Grants:

• 2025, "Genetic Programming Hyper-Heuristics for Dynamic Dial-a Ride", Industrial Project with Honda Research Institute Europe, €20,000 EURO. (PI)
• 2024-2027, "Machine Learning for Emergency Medical Dispatch: A Data Driven Approach", MBIE Endeavour Smart Idea Fund, $1,000,000 NZD. (PI)
• 2024-2027, "Machine Learning for Combinatorial Optimisation: An Evolutionary Computation Approach", New Zealand Royal Society Catalyst Leaders Fund, $150,000 NZD. (PI)
• 2022-2023, "Te Kapahaka Punaha Taupanga (The Kapahaka Software Judging System)", SfTI Seed Project Fund, $200,000 NZD. (Co-PI)
• 2020-2027, "A data-science driven evolution of aquaculture for building the blue economy (AI/ML Advanced Research and Applications to Aquaculture)", MBIE SSIF Fund on Data Science, $13,000,000 NZD. (Theme Leader and Key Researcher)
• 2017-2020, "Automatic Design of Heuristics for Dynamic Arc Routing Problem with Genetic Programming", 16-VUW-079, Marsden Fund Fast-Start Grant, $300,000 NZD. (PI)

Services/Engagements

• Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation
• Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence
• Associate Editor, IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine
• Associate Editor, Journal of Scheduling
• Associate Editor, International Journal of Applied Evolutionary Computation
• Editor, IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Newsletter
• Editorial Board Member, International Journal of Computational Intelligence and Applications
• Editorial Board Member, International Journal of Bio-Inspired Computation
• Editorial Board Member, International Journal of Automation and Control

• Real-World Applications Track Chair, ACM Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) 2026
• Journal-2-Conference Chair, World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI) 2026 and 2024
• Program Chair, International Conferences on Artificial Intelligence (PRICAI) 2025
• Evolutionary Combinatorial Optimization and Meta-heuristics Track Chair, ACM Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) 2025 and 2024
• Technical Chair, CI for Energy, Transport and Environmental Sustainability Symposium, SSCI 2025
• Publicity Chair, International Conference on Evolutionary Multi-Criterion Optimization (EMO) 2025
• Finance Chair, Conference on Image and Vision Computing New Zealand (IVCNZ) 2020
• Proceedings Chair, IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC) 2019
• Tutorial Chair, Pacific Rim International Conferences on Artificial Intelligence (PRICAI) 2019
• Sponsorship Chair, Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence 2018

• Chair of IEEE New Zealand Council, 2026-2027
• Chair of IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Evolutionary Computation Technical Committee, 2026-2027
• Chair of IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Education Portal Subcommittee, 2026-2027
• Chair of IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Travel Grant Subcommittee, 2024-2025
• Chair of IEEE Taskforce on Evolutionary Scheduling and Combinatorial Optimisation, 2021-2025
• Chair of IEEE New Zealand Central Section, 2021-2024