With great sadness and unbelief we inform you that our colleague Da Ruan unexpectedly deceased on July 31. The Board of Directors, the management and staff of SCK•CEN express their condolences and deepest sympathy to his family.
Da Ruan began his career at SCK•CEN in 1991, after obtaining his PhD in Mathematics from Ghent University. As a postdoc Da completed the TRANSFUSION project successfully by developing a fast algorithm for the analysis of well-logging signals for the oil industry. Subsequently he took the initiative in the FLINS (Fuzzy Logic In Nuclear Science) project and the FLINS conferences which grew to become the leading conference in this specialized field.
Da Ruan searched tirelessly for applications of Fuzzy Logic and related theories and found them, for example, in reactor control, cost estimates including uncertainties of large projects, decision support systems and the analysis of large data sets for safety culture and the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. He published more than 90 peer-reviewed journal articles, two text books and 20 research books. His international recognition is also shown by numerous invitations to act as a keynote speaker at international conferences, as well as by the award of an honorary doctorate from the Nuclear Power Institute of China.
Da Ruan served as member of the editorial board of Fuzzy Sets and Systems, as regional editor for Europe of the International Journal of Intelligent Automation and Soft Computing, co-editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Nuclear Knowledge Management, editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Computational Intelligence Systems, editor of the book series Intelligent Information Systems and editor of the proceedings series Computer Engineering and Information Science.
Da Ruan was guest professor at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science at Ghent University and at the Department of Applied Economics at Hasselt University. At the Faculty of Information Technology at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, he was assistant professor.
His colleagues will remember Da as a motivated scientist with an indefatigable but also very congenial personality. With the passing away of Da, SCK•CEN has lost one of its most outstanding and productive scientists. He is survived by his wife Greet and two sons Alexander and Nicolas.
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