Prof. Vilem Novak, Ph.D., DSc. is founder and former director of the Institute for Research and Applications of Fuzzy Modeling of the University of Ostrava, Czech Republic. The institute (established in 1996) is one of the world-renowned scientific workplaces that significantly contributed to the theory and applications of fuzzy modeling. V. Novak obtained a PhD in mathematical logic at Charles University, Prague in 1988; DSc. (Doctor of Sciences) in computer science in the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw in 1995; full professor at Masaryk University, Brno in 2001. His research activities include mathematical fuzzy logic, approximate reasoning, mathematical modeling of linguistic semantics, fuzzy control, analysis and forecasting of time series, and various kinds of fuzzy modeling applications. He belongs among pioneers of the fuzzy set theory. He was general chair of the VIIth IFSA'97 World Congress, Prague and of the international conferences EUSFLAT 2007, Ostrava and EUSFLAT 2019, Prague. He is a member of editorial boards of several scientific journals. He is often invited to give plenary talks at international conferences and to give lectures in universities all over the world. He is the author or co-author of 5 scientic monographs, two edited mono- graphs, and over 300 scientic papers with over 7000 citations. He was awarded in the International Conference FLINS 2010 in China and obtained the title IFSA fellow" in 2017 for his scientic achievements. He is current